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BOOK 

ECKSTORM 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Q L C 7 G 

Chap, Copyright jN^o. 

Shelf .Jl^.l § 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE BIRD BOOK 



BY 



FANNIE HARDY ECKSTORM 



o>*io 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 

D. C. HEATH cSs CO., PUBLISHEES 

1901 



Library of Congrress 

1wo Copies Receweo. 

JAN 36 1901 

^ Copyright entry 

SECONDCOPY 



Copyright, 1901, 
By D. C. Heath & Co. 



PREFACE. 

Science is the green pasture of enthusiasms, and in the 
study of it there is no denying Shakespeare's dictum, — 

"There is no good 
Where is no pleasure ta'en.'' 

So if we adopt bird-study as the representative of zoological 
science, as we seem likely to do, it must be not only because it 
is fairly illustrative of zoological principles, and because its 
materials are abundant and easily referred to, but because it 
is pleasurable to beginners. 

Bird-study, or any other special science, is justified in de- 
manding an educational hearing if it contribute generously 
either to a knowledge of the principles and methods of science 
in general or to the training of the powers of observation. 

As far as possible I have tried to open opportunities for 
work in both directions, dwelling upon what to see and how 
to see it, but not neglecting those larger problems which are, 
after all, the non-personal end of all observation ; and I have 
tried to do this in such a way that the pupils might be led 
to work independently and intelligently if so minded, or, at 
the least, to acquire, even if unconsciously, some notion of 
scientific method. 

To keep the nature study free from memorization of any 
text-book, however good, to deliver it from the incubus of 
ranking per centum, to put a premium upon the child's own 
efforts at discovery, is to make the nature work effective. If 
the author has a message, it is that a child's value, or a num's 
value as for that, is rated by his self-reliance, — not bv what 



IV PREFACE, 

he guesses lie knows, but by what he knows he knows, which 
for most of us does not so very much exceed the limits of 
what we have seen and experienced. To have seen something 
clearly, to be able to tell about it with precision, to have done 
something as well as it could be done, even if the sight, the 
tale, the deed, were not notable, gives power and poise. All 
studies that increase this effective force of the student are 
profitable. Theoretically, all studies do increase it, — but not 
for all students. But nature study, under any except the 
poorest instruction, must give a first-handed acquaintance 
with facts and an assurance of knowledge. 

It should be remembered, too, that the collection and study 
of facts by direct observation is scientific work. The com- 
parison and analysis of them also is scientific work. Observa- 
tion and comparison — not learning hard names — is science. 
Therefore the pupil who can tell one new fact about a bird 
has done more real work of the kind that counts than the 
other pupil who has learned all its Latin names. 

Yet I am not discouraging the acquisition of the scientific 
terminology. Intelligent children find the Latin names as 
easy to learn as the English, and, with a little assistance, can 
master all the commoner botanical, or ornithological, or ento- 
mological names. This, however, is not the science that the 
teacher is supposed to teach, and it should not be required, 
but only permitted to those who desire to do extra work. 

It has been urged against many books on birds that they 
are New England treatises. In making this one, special care 
has been taken to have a book that could be used in any part 
of the country. It is true that the author has frankly " harked 
back " to a childhood spent in Maine, — 

"East, West, 
Hame's best ; " — 

but all the birds selected for special study, with the exceptions 
of the sooty grouse and the pine grosbeak, are birds that are 



PREFACE. V 

well-known, abundant, easily observed, and resident in nearly 
all parts of the country. 

The arrangement of the book has two ends in view : to adajjt 
the study to the school year, and to present it so that when 
the pupil begins field work he shall be able to do it with some 
general idea of what is worth observing. The study of unfa- 
miliar types gives some notion of the breadth of the subject, — 
its extent ; and it furnishes a store of facts to be applied to its 
intent, the study of comparisons, in the next section ; it also 
helps to fix in mind the definite relation between a living 
organism and its environment, which, treated from the evolu- 
tionary standpoint, forms the subject of the third section. 
When spring appears the pupil is ready for field work, which 
can be successfully begun only when the birds are in full song 
and full plumage ; he comes to it as an unhackneyed subject, 
but one concerning which he already has a store of knowledge. 

The authenticity of the text has been an object of solicitude. 
Whatever is not my own — and most of it is mine — is given 
on the authority and by the permission of some of our best 
field naturalists. For such permissions I am indebted to Mr. 
William Brewster, whose admirable treatise on migration I 
have quoted freely, because his words could hardly be either 
condensed or simplififed; also to Mr. A. W. Anthony, Mr. 
Chase A. Littlejohn, and Captain D. P. Ingraham, by whose 
courtesy several valuable papers are quoted almost entire. 
Some lesser obligations are noted in their places. The manu- 
script was read by the well-known author and ornithologist, 
Mr. C. J. Maynard, to whom hearty thanks are due. 

FANNIE HARDY ECKSTORM. 



CONTENTS. 



PAET I. 



WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES: 



Little Studies in Enviromnent. 



PAGE 

3 



Among the Reeds and Rushes — The Grebe ; The Loon 

An Alaskan Island — The Ancient Murrelet . . . .14 

Off Grand Manan — Jaegers 18 

The Herring Gull .......... 23 

On the Farralones — Feeding Habits of Gulls on the Pacific Coast 30— 
The Little People of the Junk o' Pork — Leach's Petrel . 33 
Feeding Habits of the Fulmars off the Coast of Southern 

California .......... 38 

The Neighborhood of Perce — Gannets ..... 42 

A Cypress Swamp — The Anhinga . . . . . . .48 

The Life History of the American Flamingo . . . .52 

The Sea-birds of the Plains — Pelicans 57 



PAET II. 
STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON: 

Little Studies in Differentiation. 

Comparing Bones .......... 67 

The Foot of a Swimming Bird . . . . . . .71- 

The Wing of a Bird . . . . . . . . .75 

A Feather . . . . . . . . . . .81 

The Bird in the Air ......... 84 

vii 



Vlll 



CONTENTS, 



PAGE 

Comparing Feet . . . ' 93 

Comparing Bills . . . . . . . . . . 99 ' 

Eyes and Cameras . . . . . . . . . . 108 

The Iris of Birds 112 

White Blackbirds and Other Freaks 115 



PART III. 



PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE: 

Little Studies in Zoological Theory. 
The Basis of Classification . 
The Degrees in Classification . 
How Birds are named . 
Concerning the Bird's Latin Name 
A Subspecies ..... 
The Three Great Problems of Bird 
The First Problem of Bird Life 
The Second Problem of Bird Life 
The Third Problem of Bird Life 
Protection by Color 
Zoogeography ..... 
Distribution ..... 
Migration 



Life 



121 

126 

128 

130 

132 

135- 

138 

142 

146 

149 

155 

157 

163 



PAET IV. 
SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS: 

Little Studies in the Art of Observation. 

About Birds' Drinking ......... 175 

How A Hawk eats his Food. ....... 179" 

The Small Flycatchers 183 



CONTENTS. 



IX 



Spring in Western Oregon — The Booming of the Sooty Grouse 

A Winter Resident — The Ruffed Grouse 

The Eaves-swallow : how she came and built her Nest 

The Eaves-swallow : how she changed her Style of Building 

Knights and Castles — The Purple Martm 

Some Caged Pine Grosbeaks . % 

The Bird Invisible — The Cuckoo . 

A Dead Beat — The Cow-bird 

The Nest in the Pasture Spruce 

How the Shrike hunts . 

How THE Robin gets his Worm 

The Strange Things Birds do and the Strange Things they 

SAY 



PAGE 

188 
194 
201 
208 
213 
219 
225 
230 
236 
242 
248 

253 



APPENDIX. 



zoogeographical divisions of the world .... 263 

Migration ........... 264 

Hints on observing Birds ........ 267 

Hints on identifying Strange Live Birds ..... 269 

Certain Questions answered ....... 270 

Lists of Books .......... 273 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



1. Pied-bill Grebe .... 

2. Loon 

3. Ancient Murrelets 

4. Jaeger 

6. Cormorant and Herring-Gull 

6. Petrel 

7. Gannets . . . . . 

8. Anhinga 

9. Flamingoes . . . . 

10. Head of White Pelican in Breeding Season 

11. Skeletons of Man and Bird 

12. Bones of Wing of Bird and Arm of Man 

13. Leg Bones of the Loon 

14. Wing Bones of Bat .... 

15. Wing of Bird 

16. Diagram of Technical Terms 

17. Gulls flying 

18. Gulls flying (from an instantaneous photograph 

19. Gulls flying (fifty images per second) 

20. Semi-palmate Foot of Sandpiper 

21. Lobate Foot of Phalarope . 

22. Excised Webbed Foot of Black Tern 

23. Palmate or Webbed Foot of Duck 

24. Toti-palmate Foot of Gannet 

25. Zygodactyl (or Yoke-toed) Foot of Woodpecker 

26. Syndactylous Foot of Kingfisher 



Facing 



4 
10 
14 
18 
30 
34 
42 
48 
52 
63 
67 
69 
72 
75 
76 
78 
85 
86 
87 
94 
94 
95 

9-3 
9(> 
97 



Xll ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

27. Foot of Longspur . . . .97 

28. Head of Swift . . .99 

29. Head of Long-billed Curlew 100 

30. Bills of Frigate Bird, Hawk, Shrike, Vireo, and Bluebird . 102 

31. Head of Black Skimmer 104 

32. Spoon-billed Sandpiper Facing 105 

33. Head of Roseate Spoonbill . 106 

34. Bill of Crook-billed Plover 106 

35. Diagram of Human Eye 108 

36. The Eye of the Hawk and of the Owl 110 

37. Head of Goosander (male) 113 

38. Head of Goosander (female) 113 

39. Head of Hooded Merganser (male) .... Facing 114 

114 
181 
185 
188 
194 



40. Head of Red-breasted Merganser (male) . 

41. Sharp-shinned Hawk ....... 

42. Phoebe 

43. Sooty Grouse 

44. Ruffed Grouse 

45. Nests of Eaves-Swallows 208 

46. Purple Martins Facing 213 

47. Pine Grosbeak *' 219 

48. Cuckoo ''225 

49. Cow-bird . '' 230 

50. Shrike ''236 

51. Sparrow hung up by Shrike 243 

52. Centipede impaled by Shrike 246 

53. Robin Facing 248 

54. Hermit Thrush "255 

55. Vireo "256 

'}6. White-throated Sparrow " 258 

Map, showing Zoogeographical Divisions of the World . 262 



PART I. 

WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 



LITTLE STUDIES IN ENVIRONMENT. 

'* His interest in the flower or the bird lay very deep in his mind, — 

was connected with nature, — and the meaning of nature was never 

attempted to be defined by him. He would never offer a memoir of his 

observations to the Natural History Society. ' Why should I ? To 

detach the description from its connections in my mind would make it 

no longer true or valuable."* " 

— Emerson on Thoreau. 



THE BIRD BOOK. 

AMONG THE EEEDS AND RUSHES. 

THE GREBE. 

"Dear marshes ! vain to him the gift of sight 
Who cannot in their various incomes share. 

^ v^ v^ 7F^ Tp: ^ ^ 

In spring they lie one broad expanse of green, 

O'er v^hich the light winds run with glimmering feet : 

Here yellower stripes track out the creek unseen, 

There darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet ; 

And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, 

As if the silent shadow of a cloud 

Hung there becalmed with the next breath to fleet." 

— James Russell Lowell, 

An Indian Summer Beverij. 

Birds that cannot fly we may have heard of^ but did you 
ever hear of birds that cannot walk ? Here is a picture of 
one of them. I am sure it cannot walk, for I once had one for 
a short time as a pet, and it never made an attempt to escape. 
Had I left it over night on a table, I should have found it in 
the same place in the morning. No worse accident could 
happen to this poor bird than to be dropped on the land a 
little distance from water ; she could not rise from the land to 
fly, and she could not reach the water unless the slope toward 
it were steep. Most birds would die if they had to spend their 
whole life in the water, but the grebe would die on the land. 



4 WATEE-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES, 

Would you like to see her at home ? Then early some 
summer morning, if you live near a meadow stream that 
wanders off behind beds of bulrushes and thickets of alders, 
and widens out between broad, grassy meadows, take a little 
voyage in your boat up the stream, paddling slowly and 
quietly. There are carpets of lily leaves, both the round pad 
of the white water-lily, dark green above and red beneath, 
and the long, lighter green leaves of the yellow ^^ cow-lily,'' or 
spatterdock; by the water's edge there are scattered spears 
of arrow-head with its white blossoms and clumps of tall 
pontederia, which in Maine we call both " pickerel-weed '' and 
*^ moose-ear/' the latter name being given because its long, 
pointed leaves look like the ears of the moose. Its blue spikes 
of gold-spotted flowers draw the insects to it, and the ducks 
love to hide in the thick cover of its leaves. 

Perhaps from behind the ranks of tall moose-ear that stand 
up off the end of yonder point our grebe may come swimming 
out. Perhaps we may see her settle slowly into the water 
among that patch of floating water-target that spreads its little 
oval pads like a carpet. Perhaps she may be up the side-run, 
whose course is marked by a line of the tall red thorough wort, 
and by waving ribbons of cat-tail leaves. 

Watching motionless, we may sometime see her glide out 
from such a place as this, floating like a little duck, for which 
you would at first mistake her. She picks up an insect from 
the water, or rises to snatch one from the stalk of some water- 
plant. Many a gauze-winged blue and green dragon-fly goes 
to satisfy her appetite. Por insects form by far the larger 
portion of her diet, though she sometimes eats fish. Indeed, 
in the West, the grebes are often found in alkaline ponds 
where no fish can live. But why does the grebe swallow her 
own feathers ? The gizzard of the grebe as commonly con- 




Fig. 1. — PIED-BILLED GREBE. 



Facing- page 4. 



AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES. 5 

tains a small mass of feathers as that of the domestic fowl 
contains gravel. The fact is known to every naturalist, but 
no one is sure of the reason for it. 

The commoner grebe of our streams and ponds is a plain 
little brown-eyed bird, grayish brown above, and grayish 
white below. In the spring, for a few weeks, a black band 
encircles the bill, which gives it the name of ^^ pied-billed ^' ; 
and it has then a throatpatch of jetty black that also dis- 
appears later in the year. 

The other grebe, not so common as this except in the North, 
is a red-eyed bird with a grayish black upper and a pure 
white under surface. In the spring this bird also puts on a 
bridal dress, which entirely alters its appearance. Above it 
is glossy black; the throat and front of the neck become rich 
chestnut, which follows down each side in a stripe near the 
wings ; around the head, back of the eyes, springs a great 
mufile of black silky plumes that stand out like the frill to a 
bonnet, and long, buffy-brown plumes start out near the ears. 
These feather ornaments give the bird its name of "horned" 
grebe. All the grebes put on a gay breeding dress in the 
spring. It is odd that after wearing these fine feathers only 
a few weeks, they should shed them and put on their plain 
everyday dress. In the West the horned grebe is replaced by 
the American eared grebe, with g^olden tufts instead of brown 
ones. 

It is scarcely likely that you will learn much about the 
colors of the grebe in one trip or in two or three ; probably 
you will not be able to decide which species you are observ- 
ing, for she is a suspicious little body, and if she does not 
like your looks she will glide back under the cover of the 
plants, or will sink slowly beneath the surface of the water. 
If you do not watch her every moment, she will disappear 



6 WATER-BIEBS IN THEIR HOMES. 

without leaving a ripple, and you may never see her again ; for 
she can swim a long way with only her bill out of the water. 
If she is suddenly alarmed, she will plunge in with a splash, 
head down and heels up, and so quickly that she can dodge 
a bullet after she sees the flash of the gun. So the com- 
monest names of the grebe are "devil-diver/' or "hell-diver/' 
or ^"water-witch." 

The grebe builds her nest in the water, making it of rushes 
and water-plants, which she nips off with her sharp bill and 
piles together, either upon the bottom, upon the shore close 
to the water's edge, or around some tall reed which securely 
moors the little floating nest. On leaving the nest she covers 
it with grass and weeds, so that it may be less easily detected. 
The nest is usually wet, and often the eggs lie partly in the 
water that gathers in it. But this seems to make no difference 
to the little grebes, who, as soon as they are hatched, are ready 
to sail off after their mother. What a very damp life a grebe 
must lead, always in the water, whether asleep or awake, and 
even when in the shell hatched in a leaky cradle ! 

Yet it is not an unpleasant life. The grebe has few enemies, 
and the most of these she can escape by diving. Food is 
always abundant. Those pleasant little excursions among the 
giant bulrushes and the fields of lily-pads bring her many a 
gay dragon-fly and dancing may-fly and swift water-skater. It 
is fun for her to follow a school of minnows, nipping them 
right and left. Besides, she has many games with her 
mates, running upon the water and diving just for the fun 
of it. 

The grebe's nearest neighbors among the rushes are two 
solemn, long-legged fellows called the heron and the stake- 
driver, or bittern, who fish in the shallow water ; a family of 
wood-ducks that paddle around among the pads and cat-tails, 



AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES, T 

or sit smming themselves on a slanting drift-log; a big gray- 
bird called a coot and his smaller cousins, the rails, that come 
stealing through the tall grass, or walk out on the lily-pads 
with slow placing of their long-toed feet, or when they are 
invisible, grunt and whistle among the fowl meadow-grass and 
wild rice jungle ; and two kinds of busy, scolding marsh wrens, 
which make the snuggest little round nests you ever saw, and 
hang them among the stout stalks of bulrushes, cat-tails, and 
tall grasses. These nests are made of coarse grasses, reeds, 
and flags, and some of them are woven most curiously out of 
the flat, dry leaves of the cat-tail. They are as waterproof 
as our own houses, for the nest is spherical and the doorway 
is a little round hole in the side. 

Such are the life and the home surroundings of the grebe. 
She is fit for no other. Her broad, flat breast and long body 
make her float like a little boat, and her silky, elastic feathers, 
with a full undersuit of thick down, keep her warm and dry 
in all weathers. To keep out of the rain she need only go 
beneath the surface of the water! She can swim under the 
surface as well as above it, and her feet, affixed at the very end 
of her body, serve both as rudder and propeller. Strange feet 
they are ; they look as if the grebe had once been like other 
birds, but its feet had afterward been laid down sidewise and 
stamped upon. They seem to be crushed flat. The toes are 
thin, the shank is like a knife-blade, and the flattened toenails 
seem to have been driven into the flesh. The whole foot is 
neither horny like a crowds, nor plump and fleshy like a 
duck's ; but a smooth-scaled, fleshless, unnatural foot. It 
always seems to me to feel ^' fishy." Yet for its use it is 
admirable. How swiftly it drives the bird ahead, cutting tlie 
water with the least possible resistance ! How well it enables 
the bird to run upon the surface or to dive beneath ! 



8 WATER-BIRBS IN THEIR HOMES. 

But the grebe cannot fly well. Her wings are small, her 
breast muscles very weak, her body so badly balanced that 
when she is getting upon the wing it drags down like that of 
a hornet until she is fairly under way ; after that, with neck 
straight out in front, and legs as stififty stretched back to steer 
her, she flies fairly well. Even then she cannot fly under all 
conditions : she must get her start by flapping and spattering 
along the surface, working with both wings and feet ; and she 
must have some space to run in, and a breeze to run against, 
or she cannot mount upon the wing. 

Indeed, but for two circumstances, we may suppose the grebe 
would never fly at all. In the fall of the year she sees that she 
must leave her summer home. Soon the ponds will be frozen, 
and her food supply will be killed or covered with ice. If she 
is not frozen to death, she will be starved, unless she leaves 
before winter. So when a breezy day comes the grebes mount 
and are off — the pied-billed grebes to southern quarters, the 
horned grebes to the ocean which never freezes. But with the 
spring back come the grebes. For those that winter in the 
ocean this is almost as necessary as their going south. Nor 
is it hard to see why it should be so. As the grebe cannot 
walk she must always nest close to the water's edge. But at 
the seashore the water's edge at high tide may be half a mile 
away from the low-tide mark. Even where there are but a 
few rods between the two the grebe would have to take her 
choice between a day on the nest and a day in the water, as it 
is twelve hours from tide to tide. So if she would raise a 
brood, she must fly to some pond or inland lake where there is 
no tide to incommode birds that cannot walk. Therefore, 
while the grebe lives in the North in summer she must be able 
to make these journeys. To be unable to fly would mean the 
extermination of the race by cold and starvation. 



AMONG THE BEEDS AND BUSHES, 9 

THE LOON. 

" Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow mist 

Their halos, wavering thistledowns of light. 

The loon that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, 
Laughed, and the echoes, huddled in affright, 

Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the night." 

— James Russell Lowell, 

The Washers of the Shroud. 

The loon can fly more easily than the grebe, though it 
needs a breeze and a run on the water before it can mount 
unsteadily on its short and narrow wings. Though it cannot 
walk at all, it has a shuffling movement on land that is better 
than the grebe's utter helplessness, and it can get on shore 
and build a nest out of reach of the water. 

Unlike the grebe, the loon does not nest on a raft of grass, 
but on " a right little, tight little island." Those on which I 
have known loons to nest were islets a rod or two across, 
sometimes marshy, but more often dry and rocky and covered 
with a thick growth of grass. All Mother Loon asked was 
grass enough for a nest, and to conceal herself while sitting. 
The nest is not very well made, but there is a slight hollow 
that holds the two big mud-colored eggs dotted with dark 
brown spots. In time there come out two of the smuttiest- 
colored little youngsters you ever saw, about the size of gos- 
lings, dusty black all over at first but later with a whitish belly 
and with comical little bills entirely unlike their mother's. 

But perhaps you are not acquainted with Mother Loon. She 
is a large bird, as big as a Christmas turkey ; that is, she will 
weigh ten pounds if in good condition. It always seems to nie 
that there is something very motherly about her stout, heavy 
body, squatting close down upon her big feet, with her wise 
old green head, as soft as the softest plush, and her two white 



10 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES, 

striped collars at the throat ; a much milder-looking, more do- 
mestic bird on her little island than when she is sailing around 
in the big lake, hallooing to wake echoes. 

She is very fond of her little loon chicks, and has more 
worries than most land-birds. We hardly realize the number 
of their enemies. Hawks are always ready to devour them 
(and whatever may be said in favor of hawks, they leave many 
feathers along the pond sides where they have picked and 
eaten water-fowl). The old herring gulls would not hesitate 
to stoop and take one, for fat young loon is a delicious morsel 
to them. Then the big pickerel in the lakes often catch young 
birds, much of tener than you imagine. The great bull-frogs of 
the Northern ponds also gobble up little ducks. (Do not be 
surprised ; for if you ever saw one of those great frogs, you 
would readily believe the statement, and I know it to be true.) 
The great mud-turtles that root about in the ooze of the pond 
bottoms, huge fellows, that will walk off with a man standing 
on their back, eat many water-fowl ; and there are mink and 
otter and men as occasional dangers, so that the poor Mother 
Loon has a constant worry for a few weeks. Still, every other 
water-bird has just the same, and most of them have more 
children to look after. 

Mother Loon has a great advantage over other birds, in her 
size and courage. She is afraid of nothing, can swim better 
under water than upon the surface, and is armed with a terri- 
ble bill that can be driven entirely through the body of the 
largest fish in the lake. 

She eats nothing but fish, and is very expert at catching 
them. As it often is not convenient to swallow a fish tail fore- 
most on account of its fins and spines, she is clever in tossing 
them in air and catching them head first, so that they slide 
down her throat as smoothly as if they were sardines. 



AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES, 11 

Though there are several species of loons in iSTorth America^ 
only one is common in the United States, and this one varies 
so much in color with age and the season that we might easily 
suppose that we had seen two kinds of loons. Young and 
winter birds are gray above, indistinctly spotted, and the white 
of the breast runs up to the chin, while the head and neck are 
no darker than the back. The '' gray loon '' of the fishermen 
is a smaller species, the red-throated diver, which lives farther 
north, and comes as a winter visitor to the seacoast of the 
United States. 

If you ever get well acquainted with the loons you will 
always be wondering whether they are the j oiliest people 
afloat, or the most lonesome maniacs that ever lived outside an 
asylum. Sometimes they have little parties with races run 
from a given starting-point to a set goal. Great is the shout- 
ing and clamor as they run on the water, feet and wings both 
helping, each one plainly doing his best to get first to the win- 
ning post — an imaginary post of course, but it will be noticed 
that all stop at just the same point. Then they put their 
heads together and talk it over with merry ha-ha-has and 
chucklings that set the observer to laughing too, and all 
swim slowly back to the starting-point to run once more. 

Often when alone the loon laughs to himself, and often, lift- 
ing his head, he gives his long, wild call — '- not his laughter, 
but his looning,'^ as Thoreau puts it in his book on the ^* Maine 
Woods.'' Except when he is at play with others the loon's 
heart never seems to be in his laughter; and you wonder if this 
terrible crazy yell, hollow, mad, and meaningless, echoed back 
by the woods and mountains that surround the lake, does not 
better tell you what a desperately lonesome and demented 
creature he is. *^ As crazy as a loon " is a., current Xorthern 
saying. Yet of all the mad noises the bird can make, nothing 



12 WATEB-BIRJDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

compares with the hoarse haw-haw-haw , haw-haiv-haiv, of a 
flock of loons flying in a strong breeze. 

I well recollect a trip we once made down Caucomgomoc 
Lake in the northern Maine wilderness- The morning broke 
squall}^ and threatening more wind, but as we had been de- 
tained by heavy rains, and as the wind was aft, we hoped 
by starting early to make the run before the sea rose dan- 
gerously. In that we did not succeed. The clouds flocked 
thicker, the waves ran white as sheep, and before we were 
halfway over they were washing level with the gunwales of 
the canoe, and slopping in-board, to remind us that there 
would be worse ahead. The land-line began to waver in the 
rising steam until we could not tell whether it was near 
or far away. The sun, " drawing water," sent down a great 
fan of j)u^it1^ ^^i-'s edged with coppery reflections that made 
both sky and water black. 

It was a wild-looking lake and sky, and for us every 
moment was worse than the last. We were not only driving 
into a heavier sea, but in making the outlet we must cross a half 
mile or more of shoal ground, where on our trip up the lake we 
had seen many sharp rocks sticking above the water and more 
just beneath the surface. The Avaves were now running so high 
that as the canoe rode over them she split them, and they stood 
in hills of water above either rail. The canoe grew hard to 
handle in such a flawy wind and broken sea, and we could get 
no clew to the dangers hidden where we knew we must run. 

Meanwhile, three loons had mounted and were racing on the 
wing. A fiendish glee seemed to fill them. Under the black 
sky they looked as black as ink. Eound and round they 
coursed, necks and legs extended, their pointed wings beating 
a double quick, as they cackled their malevolent laughter, and 
called for more speed and a better breeze. It was a witches' 



AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES. 13 

carnival in broad day, and under its spell the stormy lake 
seemed to grow more tempestuous. But we drove through all 
right, just dodged the upright fluke of an old anchor left by 
the river-drivers in the outlet, rounded in beneath the lee of a 
bank, and safe in a sheltered nook where no wind disturbed 
the calm, blew the water from our noses and wiped it from our 
eyes with much love of the land. 

The loon is the spirit of the lake. ISTothing in our Northern 
waters so entirely fits the framework of the wild, mysterious 
forest that hems them round. To hear the loon's cry at night 
is almost as if the lake were speaking. 

Once, while camping on the shores of Chesuncook Lake in 
Maine, I witnessed an impressive incident. It was late after- 
noon before a rain, and I had stepped down to the shore and 
stood looking at Big Spenser Mountain across the lake, feeling 
the quiet and grayness and flatness that falls upon a landscape 
with an approaching storm. There was no sound but that of 
a cricket ; no ripple on the great smooth lake ; nothing had 
moved recently enough to leave a circle on its surface within 
half a mile ; yet, slowly, not five rods from me, out of the 
heart of the quiet water, rose' the green head and neck of a 
loon. I could see its velvety softness, every white line on its 
little collars, the keen bill and the keener red eye, a liead 
without a body, alone in the vastness of the great lake. Then 
it sank, slow, noiseless, mysterious, without a wake. So sank 
the sword Excalibur when Sir Bedivere at Arthur's bidding 
cast it in the lake. 

" Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him ; 
But when I looked again, behold, an arm. 
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful. 
That caught him by the hilt, and brandished him 
Three times, and drew him under in the mere." 



AN ALASKAN ISLAIN^D.^ 

'^ There dark they lie and stark they lie — rookery, dune, and floe, 
And the Northern Lights come down o' nights to dance with the house- 
less snow, 
And God who clears the grounding berg and steers the grinding floe 
He hears the cry of the little kit fox and the lemning in the snow." 

— RuDYARD Kipling, The Bliyme of the Three Sealers. 

THE AXCIEXT MUKKELET. 

The Ancient Murrelet, or the " Old Man/' as the Enssians 
call him, is one of the sea-birds of the Alaskan and Siberian 
coast. The following account of his habits is so good that we 
may make place for him : — 

We were about one hundred and eighty miles east by south 
from Unga (a small island off the Alaskan peninsula) when 
these hardy birds were first seen. At first one would think 
they were amusing themselves, for they would fly a short dis- 
tance ahead of the ship, dropping into the water, and swim- 
ming so as to be near the vessel's bows as she passed ; then 
diving beneath the hull and coming up just under the stern. 
After they had dropped astern a few hundred feet, they took 
wing and repeated this manoeuvre with unvarying precision 
throughout the entire day. By close watching I found that it 
was not for pleasure they did this, but that they were feeding 
on small invertebrates, such as are found on ships' bottoms. 

By June second their nesting grounds were reached, but no 
birds were to be found, and to one unacquainted with their 

1 Abridged by permission of the author, Mr. Chase Littlejohn, from an 
article published in The Auk. 

14 




Fig. 3. — ancient MURRELETS. 



Facing- page 14. 



AN ALASKAN ISLAND. 15 

habits there was no sign of their having arrived. N'evertheless, 
we land, pitch our tent, and wait until the close of that long 
twilight which is found only in the far North; and just as it 
merges into the night we see a bat-like form flit by, and pres- 
ently from somewhere in the gloom comes an abrupt and 
starting Jcroo-kroo-coo, which is at once answered with a like 
call, or with the nerve-destroying kivee-ke-ke-ke in a very high, 
shrill key, the call note of the Leaches petrel. 

Presently we hear a whirr of wings in different directions, 
then more voices, pitched in various keys, and before we are 
fairly aware of it, both heaven and earth seem to vibrate with 
rumbling noises and whirring wings. 

As we step out of our tent perfectly astonished at this sud- 
den change, and move to the foot of a small knoll near by, 
listening to the violent outburst of noises, a muffled sound 
comes from right under our feet. We stoop and discover a 
small burrow in the earth, and from it come the cooing love- 
notes of a petrel, k-r-r-r^ k-r-r-r. This is its home. 

From a somewhat larger burrow, only a few feet to our 
right, comes another sound, and moving cautiously in this 
direction we listen to the love-notes of Cassin's auklet. which 
remind me of the sounds produced by a squeaky saw while 
passing through a hard knot, somewhat like kicee-kew, kicee- 
kew, which fortunately lasts only for three or four hours each 
night. These noises, coming from hundreds of auklet s and 
thousands of petrels, become almost distracting, and effectually 
banish sleep for the first few nights on the island. 

These, then, are some of our murrelet's neighbors, but where 
is he ? We listen in vain for some note of his, but hear none. 
As we walk on a little distauce among the tall grass of last 
year's growth, we notice a snuill dark object flapping about, 
and after a short chase we manage to capture it. and discover 



16 WATER-BIBDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

our Old Man, but fail to locate his nest. We did not then 
know the places — under rank, matted grass — which are mostly 
preferred by the murrelet for nesting sites. 

We remained on this desolate, wind-swept island for two 
weeks. After losing about a week's sleep, owing to their 
squeaking, I, at least, felt like choking the whole lot. As if 
not satisfied with the constant babble of their neighbors, the 
murrelets took especial delight in alighting at the foot of our 
A-shaped tent, toe-nailing it up to the ridgepole, resting there 
a moment, and then sliding down the other side. This exer- 
cise seemed to amuse them, and it certainly did us until the 
novelty wore off. 

In a short time after the first birds arrive on their breeding 
grounds, and before one has time to realize it, the entire sur- 
face of certain favorite islands is literally alive with murrelets 
and auklets, and both Leach's and fork-tailed petrels. When 
one walks about at this time the murrelets and auklets become 
frightened, running, flopping, and flying about in such numbers 
that one has to be careful when he steps lest they be crushed 
under foot. 

If it is windy, and it usually is, they are on the wing as soon 
as disturbed ; but when a calm prevails they have to flop to the 
side of a steep bank, from which they can jump and thereby 
gain sufficient headway to keep on the wing. In their frantic 
efforts to be off, they become bewildered and are as apt to fly 
in one's face, or against the cliffs, as anywhere. 

We soon discovered that the murrelets were not especially 
particular in the selection of a nesting site. An abandoned 
burrow of Cassin's auklet, a deep crevice in the cliffs, under 
large broken rocks which had fallen from the latter, or under 
rank tussocks of grass, with which the higher portion of the 
island was covered, would answer equally well. Under these 



AN ALASKAN ISLAND. 17 

almost solid bunches (the grass remaining from many years) the 
murrelets would force their way, leaving only a slight hole in 
the mass, which was usually very hard to detect. After once 
gaining an entrance into this matted vegetation, and working 
their way in for two or three feet, a shallow cavity about five 
inches in diameter and two or three inches deep was scratched 
out. This was nicely lined with dry grass of last year's growth, 
carried in from the outside, making a neat and snug home in 
which two beautiful eggs, comprising a set, were deposited. 

Some of their nests were found fully two hundred yards 
from the water. In the other situations mentioned little and 
often no nest is made, and the eggs are deposited on the 
bare rocks, in soft sand, or on the wet, muddy soil. I even 
took several sets on the bare ice at the bottom of some auklets' 
burrows, the ground being still frozen immediately beneath 
the grass and moss on July third, when I left the island. 

Like the auklets, they exchange places nightly, and while 
one attends to the home cares, the other is usually a number 
of miles out at sea on the feeding grounds. What their food 
consists of at this time of the year I am unable to say. 

Great numbers of these birds are taken by Peale's falcon. 
As I have already stated, the murrelets are mainly found at 
some distance from land during the day ; and here, too, thi^ 
falcon pursues them, watching for a chance to seize any mur- 
relet he succeeds in driving from the water. After having 
secured its prey, the falcon circles about for a short time, and 
then partakes of its meal. To do this he hovers, remaining 
almost stationary for several minutes at a time ; in the mean- 
time the prey is raised well up to the beak with both feet and 
promptly devoured. When the murrelets return to land at 
nightfall, the falcon is there also to meet them, and soon 
again secures his nightly repast. 



OFF GRAND MANAN. 

" From gray sea-fog, from icy drifts, 
From peril and from pain, 
The home-bound fisher greets thy lights, 
O hundred-harbored Maine ! " 

— John G. Whittiek, Tlie Dead Ship of Harpswell. 
JAEGEKS.^ 

The life of the great sea is not to be realized from the deck 
of an ocean liner. You must be close down to the heave of 
the ocean, tossed by it, and fully at its mercy, to know the sea. 

Suppose some day we were to join the porpoise fleet of the 
Passamaquoddy Indians as they set out at sunrise in their 
birch-bark canoes from the summer camp at. Grand Manan Isl- 
and — the great bluff island off the mouth of the St. Croix River. 
Theirs is a dangerous trade, but there are no bolder or more 
skilful navigators of small boats in the world than these 
Indians, who take the risks of a rock-bound coast, with sunken 
ledges, sudden storms, the densest fogs, and a tide of almost 
incredible height, that rushes through the narrows and sets in 
motion great tidal currents and whirlpools. All sailors meet 
hardships and see strange sights, but these Indians, hunters 
of the ocean, see iind know more strange and wonderful things 
and take greater risks than the ordinary seafarer. 

What might befall us if we started with them some summer 
morning at sunrise, when the surface of the sea is smooth and 

1 Pronounced ya-gei\ with g hard ; also spelled J ag'er. 
18 




Facing- page 18. 



Fig. 4. —jaeger. 



OFF GRAND MAN AN, 19 

oily-looking, and a morning fog hangs over it, smoking in thin 
curtains that narrow the horizon to a little circle, and make 
the sun a bright blur in the mist ? 

Mile after mile we are paddled, steered by the comjjass, 
breaking the fog before us and seeing it close in behind, lifted 
on the long ocean rollers that pulse in from outside as smooth as 
glass, twenty feet from trough to roll, — the slow, long heave 
of the slumbering ocean. This " old swell,^' which follows a 
blow or rolls in from a distant oceanic gale, is rarely absent 
from the open sea on our Eastern coasts. It throbs contin- 
ually even in the calmest weather, and the '^ rote '^ of it as it 
breaks against the cliffs, or drags down the rounded stones 
upon the seaward beaches and rolls them up again, is a 
ceaseless din. 

The long swells, green and bubbly like thick glass, as you 
look into them under the shadow of the rosy fog, make no 
noise, for they do not break ; but out of sight in the mist we 
hear them thunder upon a sunken ledge. 

We hear, too, the snuffling and snarling of the seals fishing 
in shallow water, which the Indian always regards as a warn- 
ing to '^ ' Ware there ! '^ For the seal spends most of his idle 
time lying upon the ledges, or else swimming around, waiting 
for the tide to go down and uncover some half-tide rock. A 
black guillemot — a ^^ sea-pigeon,'' an Indian or fisherman 
would call him — bobs upon the surface, or files by on short, 
quick-moving wings that, being party-colored, look like two 
pairs of wings, one white, the other black. He is a useless. 
harmless, confiding little bird, with his red feet and pretty, 
soft, mottled feathers, one of the auk family, and the only one 
common along this coast in summer. 

Perhaps there is a tide streak where opposing currents 
throw up a line of seaweed and ocean-drift in a long, winding 



20 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

ribbon ; and on this we may at times see a flock of Bonaparte^s 
gulls sitting quietly on the water like white doves, or a troop 
of phalaropes feeding with nervous, uncertain actions. These 
tiny creatures, dainty in all their ways and colors, stretch up 
their necks to an astonishing length, suspicious of our inten- 
tions. We see now why the fishermen call them " sea-geese," 
though they are no more geese than they are robins. 

Gulls and terns pass and repass continnally, growing out of 
the mist and melting into it ; and perhaps a shark's fin cuts 
the water, or we hear the puff of a porpoise off under the fog ; 
or, of a sudden, a roller larger than the rest, and rising from a 
deeper trough, trips on a simken ledge, and rears a straight 
wall of water with a comb of foam, before it thrashes down 
roaring. This is one of the dangers of a sealer's life ; and no 
peril of storm or wreck is more dreaded by the fishermen than 
these ^^ blind breakers," unless it is the sudden looming of a 
steamer's sides above them in the fog. 

While paddling in this way over a smooth, almost silent sea, 
suddenly a little group of gulls dashes across the opening in the 
fog, screaming wildly and hurrying at top speed. Behind them, 
silent but swifter of wing, darts a blackish bird of medium size. 
We may see a glimpse of yellowish about the throat and catch 
sight of its tail, carried fully spread, with the two middle tail 
feathers sticking out beyond all the rest but held close to each 
other. The Indians call it the '' gull-hawk," because it chases 
the gulls as hawks do smaller land-birds. Indeed, he resembles 
a hawk not only in his habits, but in his bill, which is hooked 
at the tip and provided with a cere, or waxy plate, at the base. 
This bill serves at once to distinguish him from all the gulls 
and terns with which he associates. The books call him the 
jaegar (which means hunter), or the skua; the fishermen 
name him the ^^ marlingspike," from his long middle tail 



OFF GRAND MAN AN. 21 

feathers. He is the gulPs robber cousin, a dreaded foe of theirs, 
the pirate of the sea. It is interesting to know that the jaegers, 
or jagers, from whom the birds get their name, were not peace- 
ful hunters, but a wild tribe of robbers who lived in Germany 
centuries ago, and got their living by plunder. 

The jaeger well deserves the name of pirate. He is perfectly 
able to get his own living, but all observers agree that he 
seldom if ever fishes for himself, although he is reported to 
pick up worms and mollusks. It w^ould seem far easier to get 
an honest living than to follow the trade he does, for every fish 
he obtains by robbery means a long chase. 

The terns may be fishing together, plunging and screaming, 
without thought of interruption, when suddenly this black rob- 
ber, swift and silent, is seen among the flock, following the one 
that has just caught a fish. If the fish is already swallowed it 
makes no difference to him, and he never mistakes an empty bird 
for a full one. 

How, when he appears so suddenly, so unexpectedly, he can 
always tell just which birds have been successful, has been a 
puzzle to observers, but it seems easily answered. There is no 
panic except among the terns that have just caught fish, and 
perhaps their terror reveals their secret to the pirate's quick 
eye. Having once selected his victim, he pursues that one and 
no other, flying now above him, now beneath him, threatening 
him with his bill until the frightened tern at last disgorges 
what he has eaten, and the victorious jaeger snatches it up as 
his prize. So quick is he that he often catches the coveted 
morsel before it can reach the water. 

The jaeger is not a mild or a docile bird. His disposition 
is naturally fierce and his temper intractable. Something in 
his look, aside from the hooked beak, reminds us of the birds 
of prey. Therefore it is probable that, loving the chase for its 



22 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

own sake, and for the excitement it brings, the jaeger has taken 
up his parasitic habits, not because they secure him an easier 
livelihood, but because they gratify his love of the chase. 

One very curious fact which characterizes some families of 
sea-birds, but is rarely observed of the land-birds, must be 
noted of the jaegers. The species have two different colora- 
tions or ^^color-phases.'' Some birds will be dark all their 
lives, others will be light-colored for life. They are the same 
bird in everything but color, although some are almost as 
light as a sea-gull, and some look nearly black. The light 
birds much resemble gulls, except in having more or less pale 
yellow about the throat and head, a darker upper surface which 
is not a " mantle," as in the gulls, but extends down over the 
rump and tail end, and a dark crown, which no gull has. The 
elongated middle tail feathers are a sure mark, as is also the 
habit of carrying the tail spread. The dark phase is a sooty 
brown, sometimes, but not always, with a little yellow about 
the head. The younger birds are mottled brown and white. 

There are three species of jaegers found in the United States, 
and while not often seen, even offshore, they sometimes travel 
in winter far to the south along the coast, and are occasionally 
seen about the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi Valley, 
always the same bold pirates that we met off Grand Manan. 



THE HERRING GULL. 

" The low bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea at flood, 
Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to upland wood ; 
The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's rise and fall, 
The drift of the fog in moon-shine, over the dark coast- wall." 

— John G. Whittiek, Marguerite. 

The best known of all sea gulls is the herring gull. He 
ranges from the warm regions in winter to the Arctic Circle 
in summer, inland and coastwise, in both eastern and western 
hemispheres. 

On the Pacific the American herring gull is duplicated by a 
relative, so nearly similar in size and color that only a scientist 
could mark the difference, and he associates with the Western 
gull, of the same size and appearance but with a slightly darker 
mantle. 

Even those who live in the largest cities know the herring 
gull as he flies up and down the channels among the shipping, 
or floats lightly in the cit}^ reservoirs, a winter visitor who 
finds it easier to make a living near city wharves than in the 
open sea. In summer he is up and away, far to the North, to 
the ledges along the coast of Maine and Labrador, or to the 
Great Lakes in the interior. Along the Maine coast, howevei-. 
there is usually an abundance of herring gulls in summer, and 
at one place their numbers have become a proverb. '• As thick 
as the gulls at Eastport " is not an uncommon saying for num- 
bers beyond computation. 

Indeed, it is a beautiful sight at times to see the immense 
numbers of gulls that throng "Quoddy Bay," as Passama- 

23 



24 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

quoddy Bay^ on the eastern coast of Maine, is usually called by 
the people living coastwise. The sun shining on them lights 
every bird, so that even when two miles away you can see them 
filling the air like a snowstorm, rising, falling, hovering, set- 
tling, a cloud of white flakes. There may be ten thousand, 
or there may be a hundred thousand of them, but the mind 
does not grasp the number, and any estimate is a guess. 
jSTearer to the flock, instead of a cloud of silent white flakes, 
we discover a busy, screaming tangle of birds, each intent on 
looking out for himself. All is excitement, and their enormous 
appetites make them able to find fun in their fishing long after 
it would seem they must be gorged with food. 

The gentle little Bonaparte's gull loves to sit and rest on 
the water for long intervals; the kittiwake will of ten float 
and eat what is floating beside him; but the herring gull, 
when in large flocks, is nervous and fierce, and rarely rests 
long, but takes its prey while on the wing, patting the water 
with its feet, arching its neck down to the water level while 
its uplifted wings hold it steady above the waves. Unlike 
the terns the gulls do not dive. While there usually are ex- 
ceptions to all rules, it is almost certain that an uninjured 
herring gull never dives. 

If you were to ask what brings these great numbers of 
gulls together, and I were to tell you that the tides do 
it, the answer, though correct, would seem frivolous. The 
tides of Eastport are the highest of any place upon the sea- 
coast of the United States — twice as high as those of Bos- 
ton, five times those of Xew York, and seven times those of 
San Erancisco. 

In filling and emptying this great bay twice a day through 
narrow channels, tremendous whirlpools and currents are 
formed, and immense quantities of fish are borne back and 



THE HERRING GULL. 25 

forth with the tides. Incalculable numbers of little herring 
are swept along, and these are followed by the larger fish and 
by the gulls that feed upon the herring. At times the water 
boils with the rushes of great armies of young herring try- 
ing to escape their enemies, while the pollock striking them 
from below or leaping out of the water, until the sea seems 
planted with fishes standing on their heads, and the screaming 
gulls dipping from above to seize the little fish as the pollock 
drive them up, make a scene not soon forgotten. 

Nor are the birds and fishes the only enemies the little 
herring have to fear. Thousands of hogsheads of them are 
taken in the nets of the fishermen and become sardines in oil 
or sardines in mustard. The chief industry of the towns upon 
Quoddy Bay is packing sardines. 

The gulls nest both inland and along the ocean shore. 
While canoeing on the great lakes of Maine, I have found 
their nests on the ledges far out from shore. The prettiest 
were little rims of reindeer moss laid upon a bed of the same 
dainty material, surrounding three dark eggs, larger than a 
hen's eggs, blotched with darker brown. Along the seacoast 
the nest is made of dried seaweed. It is the habit of gulls 
to nest upon the ground, but when robbed and persecuted, 
they both build and roost in trees. 

The herring gull is one of our wariest and most suspicious 
birds, its only superior in these traits being the great black- 
backed gull, which can scarcely be snared, trapped, shot, or 
poisoned. So alert are the black-backed gulls that even the 
wary black ducks, themselves among the shyest and most 
cautious of birds, sometimes have a black-backed gull act as 
sentinel for them, and warn them of danger while they sleep 
or feed. 

When Pau-Puk-Keewis, in the story of Hiawatha, kills the 



26 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

birds, and flings their bodies down the crag, it is Kayoshk, 
the sea gull, that discovers them and gives the alarm. 

" Till at once Kayoshk, the sea gull, 
Perched upon a crag above them, 
Shouted : ' It is Pau-Puk-Keewis ! 
He is slaying us by hundreds ! 
Send a message to our brother, 
Tidings send to Hiawatha ! ' " 

The poet makes a mistake when he says that the gull makes 
his outcry '' from a crag '' ; it is his custom to give the alarm 
on the wing. 

But nothing could be more appropriate than choosing the 
sea gull to raise the alarm. Many a time the Indian seal- 
hunter creeping over the tide-ledges of the bay, with every 
advantage of wind and sun, hears the harsh scream of a gull 
or tern flying over, and curses Kayoshk for betraying him. 
Every bird and beast about the seashore knows that warning, 
just as in the woods every creature halts and scurries off when 
the little chipmunk raises his sharp alarm. "A man ! a man ! '^ 
he seems to say ; '^ run ! run ! a man ! " and the old crow, 
flapping over, adds gruffly, "Go! go! go!" Thus it is that 
the birds and beasts stand guard for each other. 

Again Longfellow speaks of the sea gulls as they work upon 
the carcass of the great sturgeon within which Hiawatha is 
imprisoned, and in the description we mark two fine points 
and one little error. 

" Then he heard a clang and flapping. 
As of many wings assembling, 
Heard a screaming and confusion, 
As of birds of prey contending^ 
Saw a gleam of light above him, 
Shining through the ribs of Nahma, 
Saw the glittering eyes of sea gulls. 



THE HKHRTNG GULL, 27 

Of Kayoshk, the sea gulls peering, 
Gazing at him through the opening, 
Heard them saying to each other, 
'Tis our brother, Hiawatha ! 

******* 
And the wild and clamorous sea gulls, 
Toiled with heak and claws together." 

This vigorous and truthful picture is not at all what we 
who are not poets would have imagined. Because of its white- 
ness most of us think the gull the emblem of purity and 
gentleness, and would not have written — 

''As of birds of prey contending." 

Yet that just describes the fierceness and rapacity of sea gulls. 
Few of our most savage hawks are more bloodthirsty than 
rjea gulls, just as the crow is hardly more shrewd and ingen- 
.ous, and as no bird is at once so bold and so wary. 
Nor is the error in the line — 

" Saw the glittering eyes of sea gulls ; " 

for the kind the poet is describing — the kind he must be 
describing, both because his words fit that and no other, and 
because it is the gull he used oftenest to see when he was a 
boy and man along the Portland shore and up the river 
Charles — has yelloiv eyes that are as fierce and unflinching as 
a hawk's. (The eyes of young gulls and of the smaller species 
are brown.) 

But does the gull work with his feet ? Not unless he 
braces with them to get tearing-hold. His nails are not made 
for scratching, and his thumb or fourth toe is too high up on 
his leg to help him grasp any object. This is the touch over- 
much in the description, something the poet remembered in- 
correctly, or added from his imagination. But there are few 
naturalists equal to the poets. 



28 WATER-BIBBS IN THEIR HOMES. 

AVhen we are at the seashore we may be puzzled to see so 
many different kinds of gulls. But while there are very many 
species of gulls, it is rare for more than three or four to be 
seen in one locality, and these may be better distinguished by 
their size than by their colors. Adult gulls are always pure 
white, with or without a pearl-gray '' mantle " on the back and 
upper surface of the wings, and with or without black wing- 
tips. Adult gulls never show any other colors except upon 
the bill and feet, which may be flesh-color, red, or yelloAv. 
The only other conspicuous marking is a black or dark gray 
head which is seen in some of the smaller species during the 
breeding season, and which disappears later. 

Young gulls are more or less brown according to their age, 
and the young of some species show a black bar across the end 
of the tail, a black crescent between the shoulders, or a brown 
mantle. These are all sure marks of immature birds. 

The largest of our common gulls is the American herring 
gull, which is seen on both seacoasts, about the Great Lakes, 
and near most of the large lakes of the interior. The Western 
gull which largely replaces it upon the Pacific coast, is scarcely 
distinguishable in life. Of the medium-sized gulls — those 
about eighteen inches long — the kittiwake of the northern 
Atlantic, the black-headed laughing gull of the southern 
Atlantic, the ring-billed gull of the plains and interior 
states, and the beautiful Heerman's gull of the Pacific, with 
its gray body, white head, and red feet and bill, are the more 
conspicuous. The black-headed Franklin's rosy gull of the 
interior, often called the ^^ prairie dove '' by the farmers, be- 
longs to the group of small-sized gulls, and the black-headed 
Bonaparte's gull is a smaller bird, everywhere well known, 
both East, West, and in the interior. However, we very rarely 
see a Bonaparte's gull with a black head, as this is the mark 



THK HERHINQ GULL, 29 

of the breeding season and is worn only for a few weeks. 
The Bonaparte's gull is the common small species of the 
Atlantic coast, so often seen floating in large flocks on the 
water. 

It is not difficult to distinguish gulls from terns, which 
somewhat resemble them in color. All our United States 
gulls are square-tailed and blunt-billed, and float on the water 
but never dive, while all our terns are fork-tailed, sharp-billed, 
and dive from the air but do not float upon the surface. The 
terns commonly have very brilliant red or yellow feet and 
bills, and in the adult plumage a black cap, but never a black 
head. Young terns lack the cap but do not show any brown 
markings like the young gulls. 



OK THE FAREALONES. 

FEEDING HABITS OF GULLS ON THE PACIFIC COAST. ^ 

"For of all runes and rhymes 
Of all times, 
Best like I the ocean's dirges, 
When the old harper heaves and rocks, 

His hoary locks 
Flowing and flashing in the surges." 
— Henry W. Longfellow, The Saga of King Olaf. 

The Earralones are a group of rough and barren islands thirty 
miles out from San Francisco. No tree grows on them, and 
scarcely a plant, except the long, spongy weed called Farralone 
weed, can hold its own against the sea storms in that infer- 
tile soil. On one of the islands is a lighthouse. No other 
houses are there, and few men except those who gather eggs 
for the market ever visit the place. 

Thus being comparatively undisturbed, birds nest here in 
vast numbers. There are great colonies of cormorants, black 
as midnight, stretching up their long necks ; companies of 
tufted puffins with their gay red and green bills and yellow^ 
ear-plumes curling like a ram's horns ; murres by the myriad, 
lifting their brown necks above their snowy breasts; pigeon 
guillemots, much like the " sea pigeon '' of the East ; Cassin's 
auklets and petrels mingle with them according to their na- 
tures, solitary or in companies ; and everywhere the snowy 

1 Facts drawn from Dr. Walter E. Bryant's *' Birds of the Farralones " and 
H. W. Taylor's *' Story of the Farralones." 

30 



5 



I 

o 
o 

I 




ON THE FARRALONES, 31 

Western gull^ in size and color almost the counterpart of the 
herring gull of the East, stands his watch over a nest that is 
safer from intruders than any of the other nests. 

The gull of the East is a persecuted creature. Pie is robbed 
of his eggs ; he is killed by gunners for his wings and feathers, 
to put into feather-beds when they are not put on hats ; he is 
forced from his chosen home, and is even compelled to build 
his nest in trees, contrary to his nature. 

Our sympathies are too much with the gull of the East to 
make us inquire if he has faults ; but when we see the gull of 
the West, free, secure, little molested, we find his honesty ques- 
tionable and a trait of low cunning highly developed. The 
sea gull is so like our old friend the crow in his boldness, 
impudence, and intelligence, that it is easy to believe that he is 
honest only under compulsion ; and that the Western gull acts 
out his real nature while the Eastern one lacks opportunity. 

As soon as the breeding season opens the gulls begin repair- 
ing their old nests, which are large, comfortable affairs, made 
of the dry, ravelled Farralone weed. At the very outset they 
show their nature ; for they steal their materials from the 
cormorants that nest near them. The cormorant is heavy, 
long-necked, ill-balanced, and awkward, so that picking up 
nesting stuff is hard work for him, while the active gulls can 
gather it as readily as any land-birds. 

In their feeding we find the gulls eating their own honestly 
earned fish and crabs and sea-urchins, and also the fish that 
they steal from the nests of the cormorants. Xot content 
with this, they eat the cormorants' eggs, and later in the season 
their black, bare-skinned, greasy-looking babies. It is almost 
incredible that a bird so spotless and dainty in its appearance 
can have so black a heart, but live young cormorant is part 
of the gull's bill of fare. 



32 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

When the cormorants' eggs are all hatched, and the gull 
still wishes to mix a little egg with his diet, he torments the 
murres. Now the murres are foolish birds that bow their 
long, brown necks and silly heads continually, and grunt 
harshly, but they love their one big, pear-shaped egg. Always 
one or the other stays by it, hugging it between his or her 
long thighs and brooding over it. For all their folly they 
know enough not to trust a gull. As they are more than half 
the size of the gulls, the gulls prefer stratagem to force. A 
number of them combine to attack the murre in concert, and 
so harass and frighten her that she tries either to escape or to 
confront them. This is the gulPs opportunity. The big egg 
must be exposed for a moment. While the rest keep up their 
clamor and feigned attacks, one of the gulls steals in and 
seizes the egg in his bill. It must be a very large mouthful, 
for a murre's egg is much larger than a hen's egg, and the 
gulPs bill is but little over two inches long. He breaks the 
egg by rolling it about the rocks until dented by rough usage, 
after which he sucks its contents. Not only do the gulls 
rob the birds, but they rob the eggers. Unless the heaps of 
eggs which the eggers pile up are covered very closely, the 
gulls will work their way under the cloths and carry off every 

But eggs are not all their plunder. They just as willingly 
take the live young murres or a dead old bird. And they 
have a ]3articular fondness for young rabbits. They will sit 
and watch by the rabbit burrows an hour waiting for the 
little rabbit to come out, and then will work fifteen minutes 
in trying to swallow him. 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE JUNK 0' PORK. 

leach's petrel. 

*' Well, ah fare you well, and it's Ushanti gives the door to us, 
Whirling like a windmill on the dirty scud to lea : 
Till the last, last flicker goes 
From the tumbling water-rows, 
And we're off to Mother Carey 
(Walk her down to Mother Carey !) 
Oh, we're bound for Mother Carey where she feeds her chicks at sea ! " 

— RuDYARD Kipling, Anchor Song. 

Near the entrance to Casco Bay, on the coast of Maine, 
close by the route of steamers going into Portland, is a 
curious island which never fails to attract the attention of 
the tourist. At low tide it may show half an acre, but at 
high water there appears only a bluff-sided island perhaps 
twenty-five feet above the sea and forty feet in length, 
slightly curving, and on top bare of house, or tree, or bush, 
but green with short grass. Some facetious sailor in years 
gone by, remembering the fat '^ rounds " that were always 
kept in the pickle barrel of the farm-houses, called it the 
^' Junk o' Pork.'^ It looks very much like a piece of fat pork, 
twice as long as it is thick, lying rind toward you. The little 
island is uninhabited, and almost inaccessible by man. A few 
years since, and probably it is the same to-day, all that lived 

1 An island off the coast of France, whose liii:hthouse is tho last siijhteil 
as the ship steers out into the Atlantic. 
D 33 



34 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

on it were birds and field-mice ; and chief among the birds 
were the Leach's petrel, which fifty years ago was found 
on all our outer islands. 

The Scotch have a pretty way of speaking of fairies as 
*^^the good people'' or ^^the little people/' to win their good- 
will; and when we recollect the superstitious respect all 
seafaring folk have for the petrels, or '^ Mother Carey's 
chickens/' it seems quite fitting to give them the same title. 
That there are to-day few petrels breeding where there used 
to be hundreds is due to city gunners and scientists ; for even 
a few years ago not a fisherman or island gunner anywhere 
along the coast could be induced to kill a petrel lest ill-luck 
should follow. 

These "little people" are small and dark-colored and flit 
about toward evening like little shadows, coming from and 
going to their nesting-place. Dusk and dawn are their hours 
of greatest activity, though all day long one of the pair will 
be out at sea feeding, while its mate is at home on the nest. 
It is the custom of the petrels to lay their eggs in under- 
ground burrows about two feet in depth. In this dark 
chamber, when there are eggs to be hatched, one bird sits 
all day long sleeping and brooding ; and at evening, welcom- 
ing her mate with a harsh-sounding but loving greeting, she 
changes places and goes out to seek her own food. 

Apparently the petrels see better in the twilight than in 
broad day, as one might imagine from their large full eyes, 
which have a near-sighted look, and a pupil so large that the 
eye appears to be black, though the iris really is brown. 

There is something wonderfully soft and dove-like about 
the petrels. Their plumage, though dark colored and greasy, 
is as full and deep as a gull's. Their manners are gentle and 
winning, and they do not resent being handled, but look at 




Fig. 6. — petrel. 



Facing page 34. 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE JUNK O PORK. 35 

you with their great rounds liquid eyes, or go ti^jtoeing about 
the floor with an audible patter of their soft feet. 

Having no hind toe, and being unused to spreading their 
feet upon a level surface, they walk unsteadily on the outer 
joints of their toes, bending forward with awkward bobs, and 
partly spreading their wings to balance themselves. I have 
never seen one of those I have had in captivity try to fly, 
though I have had a dozen of them at a time moving about 
like dusky little shadows. But for the imj^ossibility of get- 
ting them the proper food, and for their rank, oily smell, they 
would make pretty pets. 

All sea-birds keep their feathers well oiled to exclude the 
water, but the petrels and their near relatives are provided 
with an oil that has an odor quite unmistakable and not 
attractive. In addition to what is used upon the feathers, 
the Leach's petrel has in its stomach from a teaspoonful to 
a tablespoonful of heavy, oily liquid, exceedingly limpid and 
of an unpleasant odor. He can disgorge this at will, and 
sometimes, in captivity at least, becomes much bedraggled 
with it. The use of this supply is hard to determine. 

How the petrels with their weak, webbed feet, which seem 
wholly unfit for such work, can dig such holes in the hard 
earth of our outer islands is a mystery. Of course the holes 
remain from one year to another, so that unless a colony is 
largely increased it is not necessary to dig new ones ; but 1 
think they have a helper whose services have received little 
credit in books. All our outer islands are overrun with field- 
mice, whose holes are found on all sides, (^n landing on an 
uninhabited island, almost the first thing one notices is the 
scampering of mice through the short grass. It seems likely 
that the petrels often take ])ossessicni of these mouse-holes, 
enlarging them to meet their own needs. 



36 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES, 

The petrel lays but one large white egg, and the parents, as 
we have said, share the work of hatching it. Earely both 
parents are found in the burrow, and more rarely still the egg 
is found alone, yet it is still unknown which parent takes the 
responsibility. With most birds it is the mother that cafes 
for the eggs and nestlings; but there are cases known, as 
among the phalaropes, where the female leaves all the work to 
her mate. With the petrels no one knows certainly what hap- 
pens. Some naturalists report that nearly all the birds found 
with eggs were females and others that the majority of those 
they saw on the nest were males. 

Out of eighteen old birds that I examined one season twelve 
were males, and there was a curious indication that the male 
did a large share of the work. Among sea-birds it is custom- 
ary for the female to tear off a patch of feathers from her body 
just the size of the egg, so that the warmth of the body may 
heat the egg directly. Often the exact number of eggs can be 
told by the number of these "brooding spots.'' It is usually 
taken for granted that the bird with these incubating spots is 
the female ; but in every Leach's petrel that I have examined 
during the breeding season, the male had the " brooding spot " 
and the female lacked it. However, we must know more about 
their habits before we can say that all the housework is left 
for the male to do. 

Often on a sea voyage, even a short one, if it take us outside 
of harbors, one may see the petrels following the vessel or 
dancing over the waves in little groups. Their flight, which 
is graceful and easy, resembles that of a purple martin; and, 
as the birds are about the size of swallows and dark colored, it 
would be natural to mistake them for swallows unless we 
knew the habits of both birds. 

When they find food the petrels gather around, raising their 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE JUNK O' PORK. 37 

wings above their backs and dropping their long, thin legs. 
They hold themselves stationary by fluttering their wings and 
pattering with their webbed feet, much as a boy balances him- 
self on a barrel by keeping both feet and hands in motion. 
The name " petrel/' or little Peter^ is an allusion to St. Peter's 
attempt to walk upon the water. The Germans call them 
" Petersvogel/' or Peter's birds, from the same pretty conceit. 

Can we understand the life of these petrels ? The glimpse 
we have had of them is their one visit to the land in all the 
year. After their little chick is out of the shell and able to 
go to sea, the petrel never comes to shore again unless driven 
in by storms. No birds are so near to the sailor in all his 
voyages nor so remote from the landsman's travels as the 
petrels and their near relatives. Their peculiar odor gives us 
a hint — and a strong one — of train oil, and whaling voyages, 
and long months out of sight of land. Day after day, month 
after month, they are alone upon the ocean. 

Picture to yourself the solemn loneliness of such a life. All 
they eat must come by fishing, or from the ocean drift, and 
when they drink it must be salt water. They can never alight 
on anything more stable than the rocking billows. Does it 
storm ? There is no protection to them from rain or cold un- 
less they fly above the storm or beyond it. They sleep on the 
wing or on the wave, homeless wanderers, driven up and down 
the sea with no rest except in motion. What a solitary life, 
fit only for a savage bird that hates man and his own kind! 
Yet these houseless and homeless creatures are more sociable 
than solitary, more confiding than ^morose; they seek the 
neighborhood of ships, are easily caught, readily tamed; and 
the smaller kinds are gentle in disposition, if not afteetionate. 
It is one of the mysteries of the great ocean, what makes its 
loneliness and immensity so dear to these little sailor birds. 



FEEDING HABITS OF THE FULMAES OFF THE 
COAST OF SOUTHERN CALIFOENIA.^ 

*' Sun, wind, and cloud shall not fail from the face of it, 
Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free ; 
And the ships shall go abroad 
To the glory of the Lord 
Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea ! " 
— RuDYARD Kipling, The Last Chantey. 

Ten miles west of Point Loma, at the entrance of San Diego 
Bay, is an extensive fishing bank extending parallel with the 
coast for a distance of several miles. This bank is resorted to 
during fair weather from October first to March first by the 
San Diego fishermen, who obtain large quantities of rock-cod 
there for the markets of southern California. The fishing is 
all done in from seventy-five to one hundred fathoms of water. 
There are often large schools of small fish on the surface which 
attract great numbers of sea-birds, including the fulmars, and 
it is along this bank that fulmars are to be found if anywhere 
near shore. 

Some time about the last of September the first of them 
make their appearance, the exact date being somewhat uncer- 
tain and due in a measure to the food supply, and quite possi- 
bly also to the weather. * They are hardly what one would call 
gregarious, although several are often seen in company flying 
along in a loose, straggling flock. More often they are seen in 

1 Abridged, with author's i)ermissiou, from an article by A. W. Anthony 
iu The Auk, April, 1895. 

38 



FEEDING HABITS OF THE FULMARS. 39 

flocks of black-vented, shear water s, one or two in a flock of 
fifty. 

Unlike the shearwaters, however, they seldom pass a craft 
without turning aside at least to make a circuit about it before 
flying on. If the vessel is a fishing sloop, sounding on the 
banks, the chances are in favor of the shearwaters being forgot- 
ten and allowed to disappear in the distance while the fulmar 
settles lightly down on the water within a few yards of the 
fisherman. The next fulmar that passes will, after having 
made the regulation circuit, join the first, until within a few^ 
minutes a flock of six or eight of these most graceful and 
handsome petrels have collected, dancing about on the waves 
as light and buoyant as corks. 

As the lines are hauled up after a successful sound, the long 
string of often twenty or thirty golden-red fish is seen 
through the limpid water while still several fathoms down, 
and great excitement prevails. Any fulmars that have grown 
uneasy and have started out on the periodical circuit of the 
craft, immediately alight a few yards to the windward. Those 
that are on the water and have drifted away hasten to the 
spot, with wings outspread and feet pattering along on the 
water. 

It is more than likely that in hauling up the line one or 
more fish have become detached from the hooks ; such fish, 
if loosened after having been raised from twenty fathoms, 
are sure to rise to the surface a few feet to the windward 
of the boat. The pressure of the deep water being suddenly 
removed, the air in the air-bladder expands so quickly that 
the fish is greatly distended, and rises helpless to the surface. 

With a hoarse croak and wings outspread the nearest ful- 
mar pounces upon the unfortunate cod, keeping all others at 
bay with threatening beak. A few hasty snaps at the eyes. 



40 WATER-BIRDS IX THEIR HOMES. 

or air-bladder protruding from the mouth, convinces him that 
codfish are tough, and the first floater, if a large one, is aban- 
doned for a moment for the second, should there be more than 
one, or for a snap at the bait on the hooks. 

Their excitement by this time has attracted the attention 
of several Western and American herring gulls, which hover 
screaming over the sloop, too shy to attempt to touch the fish 
while it is so near. Another ocean wanderer meantime has 
arrived ; a short-tailed albatross, sweeping along, has noticed 
the commotion among his lesser brethren, and with a groan- 
ing note settles down by the floating fish, keeping all trespass- 
ers away by a loud clattering of his mandibles ; though not 
infrequently a fulmar will dispute possession for some time 
with an albatross before leaving a fish he has torn open, and 
I think a fulmar will usually rout a Western gull completely. 

In attacking a fish under the above conditions, the eyes and 
air-bladder are first eaten, after which the abdomen is torn 
open, if possible, and the entire contents of the skin torn out 
piecemeal. I have, however, seen birds seated on the water 
by the side of a fish from which they had eaten the eyes, 
though they were unable to tear open the tough skin. 

In diving the fulmars use both feet and wings, the latter 
only half open, the primaries seeming to be used very little, 
if any, but kept drawn back with the secondaries. Once 
under water they make good headway, seizing the fish, which 
is swallowed immediately upon reaching the surface. 

Although mention has been made of their following fishing 
sloops, fish form a very small part of their diet while on the 
coast. In fact it is the exception. I have never found a 
small fish in the stomachs of those I have taken, nor have 
I seen them catch fish themselves, though I have no doubt 
regarding their ability to do so, should they fall in with a 



KEEBING HABITS OF THE FULMARS. 41 

school of small herring or anchovies ; and from their associat- 
ing with flocks of shearwaters I infer that they derive a j^art 
of their food from such schools of small fry when they are 
common. 

There is, however^ a large jellyfish that is usually abun- 
dant along the coast during the time of the fulmars' sojourn, 
and these are never disregarded by the ever hungry birds. I 
have often seen a fulmar sitting on the water by the side of 
a jellyfish^ part of which it had eaten, so filled that it could 
scarcely move out of the way of the boat. I think the ful- 
mars enjoy a monopoly of this diet, for I have never seen any 
other species eating it ; nor will gulls, nor any of the sea-birds 
that I have observed, pay any attention to a fulmar that is 
eating a jellyfish, though they all claim their share if the 
food is of a kind that they care for. 

In flight the fulmars much more resemble the shearwaters 
than the albatrosses, though they have the habit, common to all 
these families, of sailing over the water at an angle of about 
forty-five degrees, with the tip of the lower wing but just 
above the waves. The wing-beats are rapid, about as with 
the shearwaters ; and there is at a distance little to distinguish 
the fulmars in the dark phases from the dark-bodied shear- 
waters, except the shorter, less pointed wings and heavier body 
of the fulmars. 

In rising from the water the fulmars, shearwaters, and both 
species of albatross found with us (the black-footed and short- 
tailed albatrosses) spread the wings and run along the water 
for a distance to gain sufficient momentum to lift them clear 
of the waves. The fulmars will almost invariably, according 
to my observations, rise toward an approaching boat: while 
both the shearwaters and albatrosses always fly from any- 
thing disturbing them, and rise preferably against the wind. 



THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF PERCE.^ 

GANXETS. 

*' Now, brothers, for the icebergs 
Of frozen Labrador, 
Floating spectral in the moonshine 

Along the low, black shore ! 
Where like snow the gannets' feathers 

On 'Brador's rocks are shed 

And the noisy murres are flying 

Like black scuds overhead." 

— John G. Whittier, The Fishermen. 

You may go with, me to the coast of Labrador, sailing 
among the bluff and dangerous islands off the mouth of the 
St. Lawrence in a cold wind, a chilling fog, and a short, chop- 
ping sea. This was the region that Jacques Cartier visited 
hundreds of years ago, and the scene is not so very different 
now from that he saw then. It does not take much imagina- 
tion to fancy ourselves in his rude ship, beating up to the 
shores of this new-found and dangerous land. Still we find 
the rough rocks, topped with dark evergreens, stunted by the 
cold w^inds, still the same sullen sea and inhospitable climate, 
and still the hosts of gannets whitening the tops of the ledges 
— ^^a great and infinite number of gannets w^hich are white 
and bigger than any geese," wrote Cartier, ^^and which bite 
even as dogs." 

Within the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, formed by the open 
jaws of the bay and the great island of Newfoundland, are the 

1 Pronounced per-sai/, in two syllables, though the fishermen make but one 
syllable, perse. 

42 



TBE NEIGHBOllHOOD OF PERCE, 4:^ 

breeding-places of the gannets — the Bird Kocks of the Magda- 
len Island group and Bonaventiire island near the Isle Perce 
off the north shore of the Bale des Chaleurs. '^ Warm Bay " it 
means, but we may judge the warmth of the region when the 
first of June sees the stunted little cattle dragging the wooden 
ploughs through ground hardly thawed as yet, while snow- 
drifts still lie in the fields. It is a bleak and sterile land, 
pinched with cold, and chilled with vapor steaming up from 
the melting icebergs that drift past in summer. 

But sometimes a clear morning of midsummer comes to glad- 
den the poor fishermen of the coast. The sea is as blue as the 
sky, and as calm too ; the rough rocks and stunted trees bask 
in sunshine, and, a clear note of color in a scene usually too 
gloomy, shines out the red mass of Perce Rock. 

Nearly three hundred feet high, steep from the sea, springs 
the great Arch Eock, inaccessible except to the birds that 
cover it. A thousand feet long, and nearly a third as wide, its 
broad and nearly level top harbors myriads of birds that 
scream and fish about. They nest there b}^ the acre, black for 
the cormorants and white for the sea-gulls, sitting in colonies 
as close as they can huddle ; and a mile off is Bonaventure, 
whose whiteness is the snowy backs of gannets that breed here 
by themselves. 

The great Arch Eock, or Pierced Eock, in literal translation, 
gets its name from a lofty arch like a great doorway worn 
through it near one end — an open door, as it were, through 
which boats may pass, and we may see the blue water beyond. 
Perse Eock it is called by the fishermen, who ignore the second 
syllable in this as they do in the little town of Perce (or Perse) 
which you can find on your maps. Imagine the low rude huts 
of this hamlet strewn about with nets, spars, lobster traps, and 
fishing-gear, and the little fieet of black-hulled, broad-bowed 



44 WATER-BIJWS IN THEIB HOMES, 

boats, with red, tanned sails, making ready at sunrise for a 
day's fishing. A fair day is a day of gladness in that region ; 
air and sea are full of life. 

At dawn the cormorants set out on heavy wings for their 
fishing grounds, flapping laboriously and stretching out their 
long necks against the flush of morning red, as black them- 
selves as midnight spectres. To Gaspe Bay and Bale Chaleurs 
they go a-fishing, and with them go the white gannets from 
Bonaventure. There is a turmoil of gulls clamoring and bark- 
ing, and the shrill screams of restless terns, ever noisy and sus- 
picious, keeping up an incessant alarm or complaint. 

On the, water about the bases of the crags little guillemots 
bob like corks, diving and fishing, and a solitary loon comes up 
to shout a prolonged halloo to some invisible mate ; or a big 
seal lifts above the water like a mermaid, and, tossing a fish in 
air, catches it as it descends head foremost and swallows it 
with a groan. 

All day long the gulls wheel and scream about the Great 
Arch Eock, the cormorants crane their long black necks over 
the beetling walls, and gannets plunge about it ; but in gen- 
eral both cormorants and gannets prefer to go farther for their 
fishing, to the shoal water of the bays, where the tremendous 
tides sweep great schools of fishes this way and that. 

Neither of these birds ever tires of fishing or can ever be 
satisfied with eating. They will eat till the tails of the little 
fishes stick out of the corners of their mouths before they will 
stop. There is a record of a cormorant w^hich was seen to catch 
and eat one hundred and eighty fishes in one and a half hours, 
or two fish a minute. All fish-eating birds have these insatia- 
ble appetites, and the amount they consume is beyond compu- 
tation, though it should be said that they do not much disturb 
the species most prized by man. 



THE NEIGHBOUHOOD OF PERCE. 45 

Gannets are not found everywhere. Their only breeding- 
places in numbers, if the small breeding-ground near Grand 
Manan has been broken up, are in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, 
although they not infrequently visit the coast of Maine, where 
they can be easily distinguished from gulls by their shape and 
habits. Their bold and beautiful action on the wing at once 
calls attention to them, as do their habits of flying in lines and 
plunging from the wing. Larger, longer-winged than a gull, 
longer-necked and longer-billed, with a longer tail, they more 
resemble gigantic terns in their graceful flight and easy evolu- 
tions on the wing. A most beautiful, bold, fierce bird is our 
great gannet, with his cold, white eye, and his taper, knife- 
edged bill that bites, not " like a dog," as Cartier says, but a 
great deal worse, cutting to the bone. A terrible weapon it is 
against man or fish, yet sometimes it brings the gannet to 
grief. It used to be the custom in the Bay of Gaspe to fasten 
a dead fish to a floating shingle or bit of driftwood just large 
enough to buoy him. The gannets, seeing the fish, and diving 
like an arrow, often from a great height, would spear not only 
the fish, but the board as well, and become victims to their too 
headlong speed. 

It is the gannet's peculiar way of diving that makes such a 
capture possible. Most diving birds, if they wish to dive deep, 
spring from the water and take a header exactly as a boy 
would do. The loon and the cormorant dive in this way. 
The gull fishes from the wing without diving. But the tern 
and gannet dive Avith a splash. The gannet is incomparably 
the bolder and more expert of the two. He hunts on the wing 
at all distances above the water, but oftenest at seventy-five 
or a hundred feet above the surface, if the fish are swimming 
deep, flying in straggling flocks. 

When a fish is seen the gannet draws iu his wiu^s till tliev 



46 WATEB-BIRBS IX THEIR HOMES, 

are nearly closed, thus leaving little surface to bear the body 
up, and, throwing himself headlong in the air, he falls like 
a plummet. Just above the water the nearly closed wings are 
flexed tight to the body to remove all resistance to the water, 
and, with a slight splash, the gannet cleaves the water and 
secures his prey. It is a bold but wise plan, for any swimmer 
will tell you that in diving from a great height it is ab- 
solutely necessary to take a perpendicular course in order not 
to " knock the breath out of one.*' 

The gannet has a peculiar provision for his needs in the abun- 
dant and very large air cells which lie like cushions between 
his skin and his flesh, taking the place of the fat layer which 
we find on most birds. It is supposed that these break the jar 
of his plunge from so great a height. When the fish are 
swimming near the surface the gannet alters his methods of 
pursuit, flies low, and dives at a slant, knowing that he will not 
have to use much force, nor sustain any great shock, in order 
to penetrate the water far enough to get his prey. 

The adult gannet is pure white, with black ends to the 
wings and a yellowish wash about the head, — the only color 
other than black, white, and brown, it may be remarked, that 
is ever found on any of the strictly seafaring birds (the eider 
drake only excepted), unless about their bills and feet. 

The gannets of the year are a dark brown, speckled with 
white as if by tiny snowflakes. The baby gannet in the nest, 
like the cormorant's young, is a naked, greasy, helpless squab, 
very slow to learn how to care for itself, and therein entirely 
unlike the little gulls, terns, and ducks, which chip the shell 
only to take up active life at once. The gannets are some nine 
or ten weeks in the nest, and at the end of eight weeks are 
still covered with down and have wings only feebly developed. 

So slowly do they come to the possession of their wonderful 



THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF PERCE, 47 

powers of flight that we are reminded of Hans Christian 
Andersen's tale of the discouragements that befell the ugly 
duckling which was after all born a swan. 

What they are at their prime we can best learn from the 
words of Mr. William Brewster, one of our most distinguished 
naturalists J who describes them as he saw them, ^^ floating idly 
on the blue sea ; skimming close to the waves in the teeth of 
a stiff breeze ; hovering excitedly over schools of capelin, 
among which they plunged with fierce energy ; and at evening 
stringing out in long lines against the sunset sky, as they 
flapped their way homeward to the rookery. But most vivid 
of all is the recollection of their presence on a certain occasion 
when our vessel was overtaken by a squall in the middle of the 
Gulfo At the height of the confusion, when the voices of the 
men struggling to take in sail were drowned by the rush of 
the wind, and the sea, a moment before so calm, was furrowed 
by furious gusts, overhead, against the black storm clouds, 
where lightning flashed and thunder rolled incessantly, a score 
of the majestic birds sailed ; calm, impassive, emotionless, 
breasting the gale as easily as if it were the gentlest summer 
breeze. How often must such a group have been the sole 
witnesses of still wilder scenes, when vessels less fortunate 
than ours have foundered and sunk with all on board.'' 



A CYPRESS SWAMP. 



THE ANHINGA. 



' ' Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress 
Met in a dusky arch, and the trailing mosses in mid-air 
Waved Hke banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals. 
Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons 
Home to their roosts in the cedar trees returning at sunset, 
Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with demoniac laughter.'' 
— Henry W. Lonofelloav, Evangeline. 

To Florida next, the home of the herons and that strange 
cousin of the gannet and the cormorant, the darter, or anhinga, 
or snake-bird, or water-turkey. 

The cypress swamp is the home of these birds, who build 
their nests among the hummocks. To seek them we must 
have a boat ; for these swamps are vast morasses largely over- 
flowed in the rainy part of the year, and always threaded with 
black, winding creeks full of alligators and poisonous water- 
snakes. 

The scene is semi-tropical. Vegetation luxuriates. The 
trees grow so tall and are so thickly leaved that the sun is 
shut out ; and beneath the canopy of their tops, among the 
great gray trunks which rise like pillars, there is a gloom, so- 
lemnity, and grandeur like that of some many-columned cathe- 
dral, religiously quiet and dim. The cypress trees, rising from 
the water, among large-leaved water-plants, grow to gigantic 
size, and are draped with banners of the hanging gray tilland- 
sia, which we know as '' Spanish moss,'^ or with air-plants that 
trail their tendrils and blossoms from trunk and branches. 

48 




Fig. 8.--ANH1NGA. 



Faciiii? i)ag:e 48. 



A CYPRESS SWAMP, 49 

Here and there the land rises a little above the level of the 
water into green mounds called '^ hummocks/' where grow scat- 
tered palmettoes^ waving their palm-like crests above the sur- 
rounding trees. Here the great ivory-billed woodpecker, the 
largest and most beautiful of his race, may perhaps be heard 
knocking with his great white beak to rout out the palmetto- 
borer. In the fringe of buttonwood, and other brush about 
the edges of the hummocks, herons breed, or did breed before 
they were so nearly exterminated for millinery. There was a 
time when hundreds and thousands of them — the great blue 
Ward's heron, nearly like our largest heron of the North, the 
medium-sized reddish egret, the little blue heron, and the 
little white egret, with the whole tribe of night herons 

— used to be here in countless numbers, building their 
loose platforms of sticks among the branches, and keeping 
their awkward guard over the beautiful blue-green eggs and 
squabby young. What a clamor rose ! What a smell of de- 
cayed fish from the fragments dropped beneath the nests ! A 
few remnants of the former host remain still and breed in the 
bushes. The fish-crows lurk about picking up the leavings on 
the ground, or stealing an e^^ or a young heron from the nest 
when they can. The boat-tailed grackle, — the " jackdaw '' of 
the South, — croaks in the willows, and a Florida white- 
breasted nuthatch, inspecting the larger trees, threads his way 
up and down, indifferent which end of him is uppermost. It 
may be that a flock of white ibises, distinguished from the 
white herons by their black wing-tips and outstretched necks, 
a roseate spoon-bill, — the ^^pink curlew" of the South, a 
great bald-headed wood ibis, — locally known as a '" gannet," 

— or a hoarse-voiced brown crane will pass bv where they 
can be seen through the tree-tops. 

And off in the distance, low down among the water-plant :s 



50 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES, 

or on the plashy border of the hummock, one hears the melan- 
choly mourning of that gigantic rail, the limpkin or courlan, a 
curious brown and white striped bird, not exactly rail and 
hardly a crane, whose doleful wailing gives it the local name 
of the ^^ crying bird^^ or " mourning widow/' 

Among such neighbors lives the anhinga, the cousin of the 
gannet and the cormorant of the rocks. Seeing them side by 
side you would not admit the relationship until you looked at 
their feet. For while the gannet is shapely and graceful, a 
heavy bird strongly built, this slender relative looks as if he 
were patched up out of the pieces left over after all the other 
totipalmate birds were made» They are alike, however, in 
both having the webbing of their feet extend along the inner 
side of the foot, from the hind toe to the inner front toe, 
which gives them three webs instead of two, like ducks and 
other swimming birds. 

The anhinga has a long neck, excessively slender, drawn 
out into a sharp and slender bill ; a light, long, thin body ; 
wings like great fans ; fully webbed feet apparently unfit for 
tree-perching, and a great, stiff tail, like corrugated sheet-iron. 
His color is inconspicuous — black for the ground color, usu- 
ally glossed with green reflections, with gray stripes down the 
shoulders. The female has a brown neck and breast. 

Concealment is easy for the anhinga. The cypress swamp 
is full of gloomy, half-lighted corners, and his black and 
slender figure fits into shadowy recesses of the forest swamp. 
Even the light stripes on his back, though they look conspicu- 
ous, are a protection to him, resembling as the}' do the ridges 
on the cypress bark with their light tops and darker grooves 
between. 

But the snake-bird does not rely entirely upon his color for 
protection. When alarmed he drops quietly froii^ his perch, 



A CYPEESS SWAMP, 51 

and the water closes over him without a ripple. If he is 
floating high, according to his custom when undisturbed, he 
dives backward like a grebe, sinking in the exact spot where 
he has been floating. He can swim at any depth. Some- 
times the whole long neck will be above the surface, rising 
from the black swamp water like some venomous serpent, 
whence the name of "snake-bird.'' Often only the bill is put 
up for breathing, and for a considerable time he can swim 
under water without coming up to breathe. 

In common with many other birds, the anhinga can fly 
under water, and will at times rise from the water-flight 
into the air-flight without a break in the motion. We would 
hardly expect that a bird so expert in the water would fly 
strongly and well, but the snake-bird is easy on the wing ; and 
when seen with its broad wings and tail extended, and its 
slender neck and body lying between the three nearly equal 
lobes, it looks, as one observer says, "like an ace of clubs on 
the wing." 

Fishing in these dark waters, flying over the hummocks, 
sitting with wings half outstretched to dry, in social little 
groups, or caring for their blue eggs in their nest that is 
always built overhanging the water, the anhinga is a bird of 
the swamps, and may be seen only in some such place as we 
have described. 



THE LIFE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAISr 
FLAMIIsrGO.i 

My first experience with these birds was in the winter of 
1884-85. We were east of the easternmost Cape Sable^ the 
extreme south point of Florida, when late in the afternoon we 
entered a bay about seven by fifteen miles in extent, almost 
every rod of which was shallow enough to be waded by the 
flamingo. 

The bottom largely consisted of a soft, sticky clay, as though 
composed of fine particles of disintegrated coral, so soft that 
with one hand I could set a pole two fathoms down into the 
mud, and so sticky that one cannot wash the mud from any- 
thing without rubbing it. Although the water in these bays 
is so shallow, much of it being not above eighteen inches deep, 
it is so permeated with this soft white mud, which is stirred 
up by the action of the wind^ that it is impossible to see the 
bottom^ and after a day or two of more than usually heavy 
wind the whole bay reminds one of a large bowl of milk. 

When about halfway across this bay — it being ebb-tide — 
our boat stuck in the mud and we could go no farther. After 
lowering sail, I climbed to the mast-head to learn if anything 
could be seen. Almost to the east of us, where the setting sun 
reflected the light to the best advantage, was a long line of 
red extending fully a half mile, reminding one of a prairie fire 
at night. 

1 Abridged, by the author's permission, from Captain D. P. Ingraham's 
"Observations on the American Flamingo,'' a paper presented before the 
World's Congress on Ornithology, 1893. 

62 




Fig. i). — FLAMINGOES. 



Facing page 52. 



LIFE HISTOBY OF THE AMERICAN FLAMINGO, 53 

I doubt whetlier De Soto felt any more pride when he first 
saw the broad waters of the Mississippi than I did at the sight 
before me. I took off my hat and swung it, and shouted, 
" The flamingoes ! the flamingoes I '' It was then that I first 
recognized the import of the name ^^ flamingo/' — flame-colored. 
The flock was fully four miles away, and consisted of not 
less than twenty-five hundred birds. I had spent fully two 
months each of the two preceding years to find these birds ; 
and I now felt I almost had them in my grasp — vain delusion. 

For six successive days each week, and for six successive 
weeks, did we devise every plan that we could conceive of, 
every day looking out upon that beautiful flock of not less 
than twenty-five hundred birds. In all that time we could 
never get within eight hundred yards of them. Then our 
water supply became exhausted, and we set sail for Key West, 
about one hundred and twenty miles away, for new supplies; 
and thus ended the flamingo campaign of 1884. 

The bird is related to the Anatidoe, or duck family, crush- 
ing its food between the mandibles, and sifting out such 
portions as it does not wish to swallow, as does the duck. 
This leads the natives in the West Indies to say that the 
flamingo lives on dirt. Its food is small moUusks, crusta- 
ceans, and other marine animals gathered from the mud. The 
peculiar shape of the beak is specially adapted to its manner 
of feeding. With its long legs to wade, and its long neck to 
reach down into the water to collect its food, it brings the 
upper portion of the upper mandible directly on the bottom, 
so that it may be almost literally said to stand on its head 
when it eats. 

It is very interesting to see a flock feeding, especially when 
the bottom chances to be a little hard, so that they have to dig 
their food out from the earth. 1^1 le water prevents their 



54 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

scratching like a fowl, but they go through the same motions, 
only not so fast; and as their long legs go up and down it re- 
minds one of a regiment of soldiers marking time. After they 
have stirred up the earth for a while, they put their heads 
down into the water, gather up the results of their labor, and 
then ^^mark time'' again, constantly swinging around and 
gathering the earth up into a mound. When they are through, 
there will frequently be a mound five or six inches high and 
three or four feet across. 

The nesting habits of the flamingo are peculiar. They nest 
in great colonies, and when not disturbed occupy the old nests 
the ioL owing year, — not perhaps the same bird using its own 
nest of the former year, but the colony as a whole occupying 
the saiae nests. I have seen not less than four thousand nests 
in one group, as close together as they could be placed. 

The most desirable locality seems to be some very shallow 
and very muddy lagoon, where the nests are almost unap- 
proachable. They are made of soft mud which is worked up 
into a pyramid, eighteen or twenty inches across at the base, 
perhaps fifteen inches high the first season, and about ten 
inches across on top. This mud dries and becomes exceed- 
ingly hard, so as to retain its form for years. The birds each 
year add a little to the top of the nest, so that the nests fre- 
quently become two feet high or more. 

The nest is hollowed out a little on top, and the eggs, usually 
two, are deposited on the bare earth. The egg is large, averag- 
ing about three and a half by four and a half inches, and when 
first laid is pure white, being covered with a flaky substance, 
but it becomes bluish when this is removed. The bird takes a 
position on the nest like that of most other birds, but sits a 
little farther back on account of its long legs, thus bringing 
the eggs a little more toward the breast, It does uot sit 



LIFE HISTOBY OF THE AMERICAN FLAMINGO, 55 

astride of the nest, as it has so often been represented, but 
doubles its legs under its body like other long-legged birds. 

I know of no authentic data as to the age the flamingo may 
reach, but I judge that its life must be fully fifty years. The 
bird of the first year is nearly gray, but after it sheds its first 
winter plumage, it assumes a reddish color. One familiar with 
flamingoes can easily distinguish their ages, at least to the 
fourth year, and it is evident that they do not reach their full 
brightness before the seventh year. 

The natives used to be in the habit of taking large numbers 
of them for food during the moulting season, when the birds 
cannot fly, the feathers being so few and the body so heavy. 
The plan adopted was for a number of persons to go out with 
long ropes, surround a flock, drive them together in a huddle, 
then stretch a line of rope around them, and at a given signal 
rush toward the flock. The birds, in their efforts to escape, 
attempted to run past their pursuers, but were tripped up by 
the rope. When thrown down into the water it took them 
some moments to regain their feet, and thus their captors 
gathered them in. 

Fifty years ago they used to be taken in large numbers and 
carried to Key West, where they were sold for food, and about 
the same time they were not uncommon in almost every suit- 
able locality from the mouth of the Eio Grande to Cape Florida. 
In these days the only locality in the United States where they 
are common, so far as I have been able to learn, is the extreme 
western and southern coast of Florida. 

One of the most interesting observations I made was dur- 
ing my last year's work. We always called it the •• dress 
parade." We were watching a flock of three hundred or more, 
standing at rest some four hundred yards from shore. About 
an hour after sunset a few birds commenced to feed, and soon 



56 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

a dozen or two of the largest males began to march backward 
and forward in the rear of the flock. Nearly every male 
soon joined in this concourse. 

The line of the flock lay about parallel with the shore, and 
the males took their position directly in the rear in a solid 
body. As though at a given signal every bird commenced to 
march, passed to the extreme farther end of the flock, and 
halted, making a great noise, as if every bird in his loudest 
voice said, " Don^t I wear a splendid uniform ? " After a 
moment's pause, all faced about, marched back to the other 
end of the line, and then cried again, " Am I not a beautiful 
bird ? " When marching back and forth, they moved in almost 
as perfect order as a platoon of soldiers. Thus the parade con- 
tinued for nearly an hour, until one by one the birds dropped 
out of the ranks and began to feed again. 



THE SEA BIEDS OF THE PLAINS. 

PELICANS. 

''The wondrous, beautiful prairies, 
Billowy waves of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine, 
Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas. 
Over them wandered the buffalo herds, and the elk and the roebuck ; 
Over them wandered the wolves and herds of riderless horses ; 
Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with travel ; 
Over them wandered the scattered tribes of Ishmael's children. 
Staining the desert with blood ; and above their terrible war-trails 
Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, 
Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle. 
By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens." 

— Henry W. Longfellow, Evangeline. 

If you were to ask me the best place in the world to study 
sea birds, I would tell you to go to our Western plains and 
prairies. It is strange, but true, that nowhere else can one find 
as many kinds of water-birds as in the interior of the country. 
Rare ducks, found on the Maine coast only in winter, breed 
among the Eocky Mountains ; the little phalaropes that we 
met floating off Grand Manan, flock more abundantly to the 
prairies ; the cormorant of the North builds her nest among the 
inland lakes beside the pelican of the South; and swans. 
cranes, plovers, sandpipers, terns, and sea-gulls breed in vast 
numbers about all the little ponds of water that dot the 
prairie. Birds that never mingle upon the coasts dwell there 
side by side. 

It is a pretty sight to see their white phunage shining about 
the blue pools, the green uneven prairie behind. How shall I 

67 



58 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

make you see it — the Prairie du Coteau du Missouri, the 
hill and lake country of northeastern Dakota and of the 
British province just to the northward ? The broad prairie, 
treeless except along the river courses, which thus outline 
themselves as in a map, rolls away in low, melting ridges that 
shut out the sky more than would seem possible to you who 
imagine that the prairie is as flat as the ocean. And so it is 

— but sometimes monotonously level like an ocean calm, and 
sometimes breaking in ripples and swells and ridges of green 
grass like the green waves of the sea, capped with the white 
foam of flowers. 

In color it varies according to the latitude, from the gray 
barrens of Assiniboia, where, the last of June, the whole 
country is as brown as a mouse's ear, to the lively green of 
Dakota that at the same season ripples in grass and wheat. 
Not that our expectations of wheat to the saddlebow and grass 
above a horse's head are met there. The wheat of Dakota is 
shorter strawed than the Eastern grain ; it has too much to do 
in filling its heavy head in the short summer season to grow 
the long stalks that we find in wheat and grass farther south. 

The abundant wild flowers bloom on a level with the prairie 

— little striped pink and white roses scarcely six inches high, 
but sweet as a June morning, the light blue prairie crocus, the 
purple wild indigo, and a multitude of showy blossoms, among 
them that treacherous cactus, the prickly pear, with its 
yellow flowers. 

An eye that knows the signs will see everywhere on the 
prairies the buffalo-wallows and buffalo-trails trod out in years 
past by millions of the great shaggy bison, of whom nothing is 
now left but these worn paths that led them to water, the 
saucer-shaped wallows where they rolled in the mud, and their 
white bones, lying where they fell or gathered into great heaps 



THE SEA BIRDS OF THE PLAINS, 59 

to be carried to market for use in sugar refining. In a few 
years these too will have vanished. 

Everywhere over the prairies near or far, in all the little 
hollows, are pools of water. Some are alkaline and unwhole- 
some to drink ; some are salt, and there grow about them 
the same plants that you pick by the sea-shore ; some are 
fresh, with little streams flowing in and out. About the first 
two is generally a whitish rim of salt or soda left by the evap- 
oration of the water ; the fresh-water pools are oftener edged 
with water plants and rushes. 

Here the sea birds congregate. Great pelicans spread their 
broad pinions in graceful flight or sit in rows with their bills 
upon their breasts meditating over a good meal. The gulls fly 
swiftly back and forth, with a strong rowing motion; terns 
clip past in sharp zigzags, like those of the dragon-flies they 
follow ; ducks, grebes, and loons float on the ponds or dive for 
food; sandpipers and plovers trip about the borders of the 
pools with melancholy pipings ; little rails skulk in and out of 
the water weeds; and great white and brown cranes stalk 
about over the plains like birds on stilts, eating rose-hips or 
dancing uncouth dances to woo their mates. 

Here the birds live and breed, building nests upon the open 
prairies of such materials as they can find. A photograph of 
a Foster's tern's nest from South Dakota shows that it is built 
principally of sticks, some of them large and long, a much 
more substantial nest than the scooped-out hollow in the sand 
or the trivial fencing of twigs that I have found among the 
Eastern terns. 

Their food, too, varies much from tlieir diet in the East ; less 
fish because fish is not always easy to find even iii fresh-water 
ponds, and more insects of different sorts. In Minnesota, the 
beautiful Franklin's gull follows the plough, and picks up 



60 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

grubs as a crow or a blackbird might, whence the pretty name 
the farmers there give it of Prairie. Dove. The gulls are good 
grasshopper catchers, and the terns eat dragon-flies in large 
numbers. 

But the pelican is the bird most unlike any we know in the 
East. His great bulky figure and fully webbed feet, his 
wrinkled, swinging pouch and long, flat bill, though familiar 
enough to city children, are quite unknown to those who do 
not live near parks or menageries. 

Any child who lives near Lincoln Park in Chicago, where 
the water-birds are given full liberty, and neither confined nor 
maimed, but trusted to remain where, they are well treated, 
may see them fishing in the ponds, or sitting quietly about the 
shores preening their feathers. 

In Central Park, New York, where the birds are not so well 
cared for, but have their wing-tips cut off at the joint, and their 
liberty largely taken from them, the chief interest is to watch 
them fight. A gannet and crane there used to have a perpetual 
difference of opinion, and to carry on a most amusing duel. 
The long-legged, long-necked crane appeared to have every 
advantage of his short-legged, short-necked antagonist, which 
could not reach up to the crane's body. The crane would 
torment the gannet until the latter opened his mouth, when the 
crane would strike with the evident intention of spearing the 
gannet down the throat. But the gannet was always a little 
too quick, and in the end he revenged himself on the crane's 
legs. He used also to punish that notorious bully, the black 
swan, till only interference saved the swan's life. Yet the 
keeper said that the slow, unwieldy European pelican was the 
master even among these fighting characters. 

In this country we have two pelicans differing much in color 
and in habits. The white pelican is more abundant in the 



THE HEA BIRDS OF THE PLAINS, 61 

interior than on the coast, while the brown pelican is common 
along the Gulf of Mexico and less abundant inland. All along 
the Florida coast the brown pelicans may be seen soaring above 
the blue water, or fishing in flocks, and sunning themselves 
on the sand bars. 

In the West the great white pelican takes its place. Their 
habits are rather similar, except in a single particular. The 
brown pelican plunges from the wing after its fish, but the 
white pelican hunts its prey by swimming. Often a flock will 
band together and drive a school of .fishes into shallows, where 
they gather up large numbers at every scoop of their big bag. 
The water taken in is allowed to drain out of the corners of 
their mouths, and the fish are swallowed. 

If the bird is fishing to feed her young, she still does the 
same, and afterward disgorges the fish ; for she could not fly 
if her pouch were filled with fishes, as many books teach us, 
because then her body would be out of balance. 

Though they live together in large flocks, the pelican so 
naturally seeks dreary and lonesome places that it has been 
taken as an emblem of desolation. " And the pelican of the 
wilderness shall possess it,'' says the Scripture, frequently 
choosing the pelican and the bittern, because they dwell in 
remote and sedgy marsh-lands, to typify utter ruin and 
desolation. 

For centuries the pelican has been chosen as the symbol of 
one thing or another. An odd conceit in its natural history 
is connected with the days of chivalry. When knights used 
to ride out in full armor, each man carried a shield, and on it, 
partly because few could read, and partly because it was im- 
portant to know friend or foe while still a long way off, each 
man painted some device which stood instead of his name. 
Usually it was a bird or an animal in a certain attitude, — a 



62 WATEB-BIRBS IN THEIR HOMES. 

lion rampant, a lion couchantj a pelican ^' in her piety,'^ a 
peacock " in his pride/' 

In such a device the pelican was represented above a nestful 
of young with upturned bills, her own head turned down upon 
her breast. She was the symbol of fostering care and self- 
sacrifice, for, so the fable ran, she fed her young with the 
life-blood drawn from her own breast. It is a pretty tale, 
though untrue, and may have arisen from a curious error in 
observation. 

Those mediaeval heralds were poor naturalists, never careful 
to see all they might, and perhaps unable to approach very 
near to so shy a bird as the pelican. Thus what they thought 
they saw was all one to them with what they actually did see. 
If you notice, the pelican in her piety is usually painted with 
the beak and the talons of a hawk instead of with webbed feet. 
The state seal of Louisiana which bears a pelican in her piety 
does not fall into this old error — perhaps because pelicans live 
in Louisiana and the people there know how they look. 

It may interest any child living near one of our large parks 
to see how the heralds made their mistake. Watch the old 
pelicans sunning themselves, standing erect, with their long, 
straight bills laid low on their white breasts, and their pale 
eyes squinting at you across their noses. The pelican of 
Europe has a pinkish bill with a bright red nail at the tip. 
The heralds, having seen this at a distance as it lay against the 
white plumage, called it a streak of blood ; whence rose the 
fable of the pelican ^^ in her piety.'' Much poor natural his- 
tory has become current because men did not see things as 
they are. 

A far more interesting and curious characteristic of our Amer- 
ican white pelican may be observed by any child who will take 
the pains to make a few trips to the park. Go first in early 



THE SEA BIRDS OF THE PLAINS, 



63 



spring. If you are looking at our American white pelican you 
will see a bird without a crest, and with a yellowish bill, very flat 
on top. Go again in May or June and observe the same bird. 
He has a mane of white feathers nearly the whole length of his 
neck ; his bill and the bare skin about his eyes are blood-red, 
and on the top of his bill, as seen in the picture, rises a jagged 
" centre-board," perhaps two inches tall and three inches long. 




Fig. 10. Head of White Pelican in Breeding Season. 



Both sexes show the centre-board, the red bill, and the breed- 
ing plumes, and both lose them soon after the mating season is 
over. The crest and the " horn '' fall off, the bill fades to 
yellow again, and by July or August the pelican is once more 
without adornment, except the little grayish crest, quite unlike 
his white mane ; this, in turn, is shed a little later in the 
year. 

It is hardly more than twenty years since this interesting fact 



64 WATER-BIRDS IN THEIR HOMES. 

was discovered, and we cannot get a better idea of the way in 
which sea-birds formerly thronged the prairie than by quot- 
ing from the original discoverer, Mr. Eobert Eidgway. In 
July, 1867, Mr. Ridgway visited Pyramid Lake, iSTevada, and 
saw the whole beach covered " with a dense crowd of these 
gigantic snow-white creatures, who scarcely heeded us as we 
arose ; as we approached them, however, they pushed one 
another awkwardly into the water, or rose heavily and con- 
fusedly from the ground, and flying some distance out upon 
the lake, alighted upon the water.'' 

The next year, in May, when Mr. Eidgway returned, he was 
surprised to find most of the pelicans had a -^conspicuous 
prominence on the top of the upper mandible, known among 
the white people of the neighborhood as the ' centre-board,' 
so called from some fancied resemblance to the centre-board of 
a sailboat. At this season both sexes were highly colored, the 
naked soft skin of the face and feet being fier}^ orange-red, or 
almost blood-red, instead of pale, ash}^ straw-yelloAv, as in all, 
both old and young, in August. . . . Soon the number of 
birds distinguished by the ^ centre-board ' daily decreased, 
while, to account for this phenomenon, a corresponding num- 
ber of the cast-off ones was found upon the ground. Some of 
these loosened ornaments had been but recently dropped, as 
was plainly shown by their freshness, while others, which had 
been cast for some time, were dry and warped by the sun. 
Toward the last of the month no birds possessing this excres- 
cence were to be seen, but the appendages themselves were 
scattered so numerously over the ground that a bushel could 
have been gathered in a short time, though upon our first 
arrival in the island not one was to be seen." 



PART 11. 

STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 



LITTLE STUDIES IN DIFFERENTIATION. 

''The point of the comparative method is that it brings before us a 

great number of objects so nearly alike that we are bound to assume for 

them an origin and general history in common, while at the same time 

they present such differences in detail as to suggest that some have 

advanced further than others in the direction in which all are travelling ; 

some, again, have been abruptly arrested, others perhaps even turned 

aside from the path. In the attempt to classify such phenomena the 

conception of development is presented to the student with irresistible 

force." 

— John Fiske, A Century'' s Progress in Science. 



COMPARING EOISTES. 

When we have plucked the feathers off our Thanksgiving 
turkey and have eaten the meat, there are the bones left. We 
do not always realize that under our ov/n skin and flesh there 




Fig. 11. Skeletons of Man and Bihd. 

(By courtesy of McClure's Magazine. Copyrighted, 1897, by the S. S. McClure Co.) 



are bones, too. This picture of the bones of a bird and of a man, 
drawn to the same scale, reminds us that after all we are much 
like the bird. If you will save the leg-bones, the breast-bone, 
and the wing and shoulder bones of a cooked fowl, — a boiled 



68 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON, 

fowl is cleanest^ — and also the feet which have been cut off 
in dressing the fowl^ you will be able to see wherein your 
bones are like a bird's. 

Let us take the leg and compare it with our own. First, we 
notice that there are the same number of joints^ but not the 
same number of toes nor of bones. I am not sure, however, 
but you will disagree with me as to the number of the joints, 
and we are likely to have trouble in naming them unless we 
begin at the right end of the leg, — first the hip, then the knee, 
then the heel. But where is the bird's knee and where is his 
heel ? 

There is an old Greek tale that the rival philosopher, at- 
tempting to make fun of Plato for calling man a featherless 
biped, presented a cock plucked of his feathers to Plato's 
students with the explanation that this was Plato's man. 
Thoreau's ready-witted Canadian woodchopper thought that 
the philosopher overlooked the fact that the cock^s knees bent the 
vjrong way. Most of us have the same impression — that 
a bird's knees bend the wrong way. But let us begin at the 
hip and count downward, — hip, knee, heel, — and we shall 
see where we find the chicken's knee. Where is his heel ? 
Where is a dog's knee ? a horse's ? a cat's ? and which way 
do they bend ? (Only remember that a four-footed creature's 
fo7'e legs are arms and their joints correspond to the joints of 
our arm numbered from the shoulder.) A knee always hinges 
forward, an elbow backward ; a wrist always hinges forward, 
a heel backward. Therefore a horse's " fore knees " are his 
wrists, and what you have been calling the chicken's knee 
is really his heel. 

Having determined the principal joints, we may look at the 
larger bones of the leg. There is the thigh-bone, which lies 
between the hip and the knee, the shin-bone, or " drumstick " 



COMPARING BONES. 



69 



(called in birds the tibio-tarsus), which, runs from knee to 
ankle, and the tarso-metatarsus (usually called the ^^ tarsns ''j, 
which is the part of the leg between the heel and the toe joints, 
the part we see in life and call the '^ leg '' of the bird. You 
will not find anything in your own body resembling this, 
though it really takes the place of the bones in your own foot 
and instep, and is made up by the welding together of several 
little bones. All you need to remember is that the name is 
tarsus and the plural of it is tarsL The name is important 
because it means just that part of the leg between the heel and 




Fig. 12. Bones of Wing of Bird and Arm of Man. 

(By courtesy of McClure's Magazine. Copyrig-hted, 1897, by the S. S. McCliire Co.) 

the toes, the exposed, scaly portion that we commonly see in 
the live bird. It is frequently highly colored, so that books 
often speak of " tarsi red," or of ^^ yellow tarsi.'' 

We will not delay to study the chicken's foot, — except to 
notice that it has only four toes, — but will take up the wing, 
with its shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints clearly equivalent 
to our own, an upper arm-bone and two fore-arm bones very 
similar though differently modelled at the joints, and two long 
hand-bones unlike our five in being solidly fastened together 
at the end. There are three fingers in place of our five, 
though little nestling birds show traces of the other two fingers 



70 STBUCTUBE AND COMPARISON. 

which, not being needed, do not develop. The only name we 
need to learn here is carpus, the scientific name for the wrist, 
whether in man, birds, or mammals. As this is sometimes 
marked b}^ a band of bright color, books on birds sometimes 
speak of the carpus, or carpal joints, or the " bend of the 
wing," as being brown or yellow. 

i^ext, let us turn to the breast- and shoulder-bones. We have 
a breast-bone, — a little straight slip of a bone that we cannot 
feel distinctly, — but it has no ridge down the centre like the 
great keel of the chicken's breast-bone, for we have not the 
heavy muscles that need such a bone to support them. Do we 
have a wish-bone ? Yes, or something that corresponds. Our 
two collar-bones do the same work as the chicken's wish-bone, 
in bracing the shoulder out. Perhaps some of you may re- 
member what happens to the arm when the collar-bone is 
broken. Did you ever notice the differences in wish-bones? 
Collect a few of different game birds and see how they brace 
the shoulder in different ways. The bird has shoulder blades, 
much longer and narrower than our own ; and, in addition, he 
has " shoulder blades in front," — the coracoids, those flat, 
wide, straight bones that are braced against the top of the 
keel to hold the shoulder up and out. Study the relation of 
these bones as they lie on the carcass of the fowl, and you 
will see how much it reminds you of the rowlock of a racing 
scull, heavily braced far out from the side of the boat, so as to 
give a greater purchase to the oar. By means of this tripod 
of bones the shoulder is held far enough out from the centre 
of the body for the muscles to get a good purchase. 

We see that while the larger bones of a bird are about the 
same as our own in number, they are different in shape and 
proportions. ]S"ow we are ready to go on and learn how they 
are fitted to the life the bird leads and how he swims and flies. 



THE FOOT OF A SWIMMING BIRD. 

How do birds swim? Why do some swim better than 
others ? 

We must not think that in order to swim a bird must be 
web-footedo The phalaropes, with only a little border of 
webbing along the toes, are expert swimmers ; so are the 
gallinules, with round toes entirely unwebbed ; the sandpipers, 
with their long, slender toes, can swim when it is necessary, 
and the water ouzel, a near relative of the cat-bird, plunges in 
boldly and dives and swims fearlessly. In the palm house 
of Lincoln Park, Chicago, there used to be a number of little 
rails wandering freely among the tropical plants and swimming 
in their little pool, a proof to any Chicago child who watched 
them that webbed feet may be a convenience but are not a 
necessity to a swimming bird. 

Yet for birds that live much in the water, and especially for 
those that fly poorly, it is scarcely more important to be able 
to swim at all than to be able to swim well. Speed is essential. 
Therefore, because it is the simplest device for securing swift- 
ness, the webbed foot is the typical swimming foot. We find 
the webs of all shapes and extent from the scalloped lobes of 
the coot and the narrow web of some terns to the extra-ample 
webbing of the gannets, pelicans, and cormorants, where all 
four toes are connected by the membrane. 

If we wish to understand how a bird swims, we should think 
of a boat. Let us say that the bird's body is paddled by his feet 
just as a man paddles a boat, and Ave shall understand how the 

71 



72 



STRTWrUBE AND COMPARISON. 



bird readies his foot forward and pulls until he has drawn his 
body ahead of his feet, and then (continuing the stroke but 
changing the kind of action) pushes against the water until his 
feet trail behind. 

If we think of the water as less easily moved than the bird's 
body, we can easily understand the paddling motion. In order 
to paddle faster a man must take either more strokes or longer 
strokes in a minute, or else use a longer or a wider paddle ; that 
is, he must displace more water in a given time. The bird, in 
order to swim fast, must do the same, — quicken his stroke, 
or lengthen it, or oppose a greater surface to the water. The 
bird that can do all three without exhausting his strength is an 
expert swimmer. 




Fig. 13. Leg-bones of a Loon. 
A Thigh-bone. B Knee. C Tarsus. D Heel. 



If you will compare your chicken's 1^-bones with this 
picture of the leg-bones of a loon, you will observe some 
marked differences in the relative length of bones, the arrange- 
ment of toes, and in that little bony spur that stands up in 
front of the knee joint, which the chicken does not have. 



THE FOOT OF A SWIMMING BIRD. 73 

Though the loon appears to be a short-legged bird, on account 
of its very short thigh, we see by the length of the bones 
that it can swim with a very long stroke. Its large, webbed 
foot presses back a great amount of water. And the little bony 
splinter at the front of the knee is a cajjital device (found only 
in the grebes and the loons) for quickening the stroke. The 
tendons fastened to the point of this extension throw the foot 
forward with great force and quickness, as any boy can see 
who makes a tip-up with uneven arms, and tries to raise the 
long arm by strings tied at different places along the short arm. 
The farther from the central pivot the string is tied the less 
force will be required to move the arm ; and so, the farther 
beyond the knee joint the pulling tendon is attached, the less 
force will be required to draw the loon's leg forward into 
position for the stroke. The short thigh is also an advantage 
in the backward stroke. 

But the man paddling has one great advantage over the bird. 
When he has hnished his stroke he carries his paddle back 
through the air, while the bird's foot must return through the 
water to make its forward stroke. The paddle meets little 
resistance on the return, but the foot will meet nearly as much 
as it created on the stroke, unless there is some special remedy. 
The folding of the foot, which diminishes the surface, meets 
this difficulty. 

In all web-footed birds the toes fold close together on the 
return so that the webs do not catch the water ; but in the loon 
and grebe they are not only arranged to fold one behind the 
other but are flattened besides, so that they make the least pos- 
sible resistance. And in both the loon and grebe the tarsus is 
compressed until it is scarcely thicker than a knife-edge at the 
back, and cuts the water before it. The last device for speed 
is the arrangement of the legs at the very end of the body. 



74 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 

where they sweep past each other alternately in long straight 
strokes, giving the greatest possible force and efficiency. 

Everything that could give speed in the water has been 
adopted in the grebe and the loon, and with what wonderful 
success ! In all kinds of aquatic feats they lead all other 
birds. Yet at what a cost do they hold this supremacy in one 
particular ! When we see the grebe^s foot, put on at the very 
hinder end of the body, flattened as if crushed by a boot heel, 
with its toes set in the same straight line as its shank, and its 
flexed heels nipping close together so that the toes turn out- 
ward, we see at once that this bird cannot walk. 

A perfect swimmer, fitted with all appliances for speed and 
endurance in swimming, he has been over-developed in one 
direction, and is good for nothing but swimming. He is put 
at the very foot of the list as the lowest organization of all, . 
while our little bluebird and robin, that seem to have no 
special accomplishments but are good " all-round " birds, stand 
at the very top. It is a harm to a bird as well as to a man 
to be so much developed along one line that he is weak in 
other directions. So in science we say that " the most special- 
ized" forms are the lower, and the '^most generalized'^ forms 
— that is, the " good all-round '' forms — are the higher 
structures. 



THE WmG OF A BIED. 

Xow we will see how wings are fitted for flying. 

That a good wing must be large, strong, light, and safe 
against accidents hardly needs to be said ; and yet not until 
we compare a bird's wing with a bat's do we observe that 
a wing may have all these points and yet be an inferior 
wing. The great skinny hand of the bat is badly shaped 
for speed and it baffles with the wind, not being made to 




Fig. 14. Wing-^bones of Bat. 

shed it on the upward stroke. The superiority of the bird's 
wing is that it is practically made of slats which swing 
in their places to let the air pass through on the up-stroke, 
A very simple change it seems to be, and yet to make it 
practical there have been a hundred and one alterations from 
the primitive hand-wing of the bats and of the ancient flying 

76 



76 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 

lizards. The bat's wing was the simplest possible device ; the 
bird's wing is a great invention. 

The bird's wing was not made hit-or-miss, but by the 
nicest adjustments and by the correct solution of many prob- 
lems. First of all, the use to be made of it, which decides 
its shape. Then, its size, which depends largely, but not 
entirely, upon the weight of the bird's body. Then there are 
the problems of making the wing strong enough to resist the 
pressure of the air; of making it as light as possible; of 
giving to the individual feather lightness, stiffness, and a firm 
attachment to the bone ; of making the feather impervious to 
the air on the downward stroke ; of making it shed the air on 
the upward beat ; of providing m uscles strong enough to spread 
these great fans and to keep them moving ; of placing these 




Fig. 15. Wing of Bikd. 

(By courtesy of McClure's Magazine. Copyrighted, 1895, by the S. S. McClure Co.) 

muscles where they will not make the bird top-heavy ; of pro- 
viding lungs large enough to keep the blood fresh and warm, 
and of devising some way of breathing that will not interfere 
with the motions of flying. The invention and construction 
of a great locomotive are simplicity itself to the skill required 
to make i' possible for a bird to fly with a bird's wings. 



THE WING OF A BTRD. 77 

' The problems come under two heads, — how the wing is 
made and how it is managed, — which we will take up 
separately. 

Let us study the wing as it looks in life, and see what we 
can discover. The one here pictured is the same from which 
the bones figured on page 69 were drawn and lies with the bones 
in the same position as in that cut. 

We notice first that when the wing is spread the bones are 
not stretched out as straight as those in our arms when they 
are fully extended, but that there is a permanent crook at the 
elbow which is filled in with skin covered with feathers. A 
plucked chicken shows us that this extension is a fold of skin 
with a stout tendon running along the double of it like the, 
drawstring of a bag. When the wing is closed this tendon 
puckers up and holds the wing neatly folded by the bird's 
side. When the wing is extended this skinny flap greatly 
increases its area, and the tendon makes a firm selvedge along 
the margin. Even the bat has such a membrane along the 
front edge of the wing, and undoubtedly it assists both bird 
and bat in steering their flight up or down, while it probably 
aids, as a jib aids the mainsail of a vessel, in equalizing the 
pressure of the wind against the after part of the wing. 

In examining the covering of feathers we see that they are 
of different lengths, differently attached. There are the short 
ones which cover the skinny portions of the wing in over- 
lapping layers, and the long ones which are attached to the 
back edge from tip to body in a single line of strong, wide, 
long quills whose use is to increase the area of the wing by 
adding the least possible weight. These quills are arranged in 
series according to the place where they grow. Those that 
spring from the tip of the wing, or hand, are called pn'/)uirief< : 
those that are attached to the forearm are the seco}idarles, and 



78 



STBUCTUBE AND COMPARISON, 



those that lie along the upper arm-bone are the tertiaries^ or 
scapulars, as they are sometimes called, that is, shoulder 
feathers. The primaries are always either nine or ten in 
number, and never vary in birds of the same family ; they are 
also unevenly webbed and often have the broader web sheared 




HG FEDCB A 

Fig. 16. Diagram of Technical Terms. 
A Primaries. B Secondaries. C Primary Coverts. D Greater Coverts. 



E Tertiaries. F Throat. G Chin. H Bill. 
K Lesser Coverts. L Interscapular region. 
Abdomen. Rump. P Upper tail coverts. 



/ Front. J Crown. 
M Leg (tarsus). N 
Q Under tail coverts. 



away toward the tip, making emarginate primaries. The second- 
aries vary much in number, are evenly webbed or nearly so, 
are never emarginate, and differ from the primaries in one 
other important respect, — they are movable. 

With the bird's wing in our hand we should notice one other 



THE WING OF A BIRD. 79 

point, — its extreme lightness. Here are strong bones, power- 
ful muscles, stiff, long quills, a wing of large extent made to 
bear up a heavy bird and to propel him faster than a railroad 
train can travel ; yet the whole machine weighs but a few ounces 
even in a bird of the largest size. We have noticed how a 
membrane stretched out in front and a band of feathers thrown 
out behind, without any heavy frame to support them, save 
weight; but the same economy is even more apparent when 
we observe that the wing-bones themselves are hollow. 

The general shape of the wing is such as to beat down the 
air with a firm, clean stroke, for which it is concave below to 
hold the air on the downward, convex above to shed it on the 
upward beat. We must not conceive of the air as having no 
weight and no resistance ; on the contrary, every time the wing 
rises it has to lift all the air above it, and special provisions 
are made, not only in the shape but also in the structure of the 
wing, to relieve it of as much weight as possible. The second- 
aries are movable, and lie between little ridges across the larger 
fore-arm bone, in which they turn, like oars in rowlocks, edge 
up on the upward stroke, face down on the descending beat. 

It is generally believed that the hollow bones of a bird help 
it to rise in the air, and that all a bird's bones are hollow. 
This is a gross error, as you will see if you examine the leg- 
bones of a chicken or a duck. Indeed, I do not now remember 
any bird of this country which has not marrow in its leg-bones. 
On the other hand, the leg-bones of the ostrich, which cannot 
fly at all, contain more air-cells than those of our strongest 
flyers. While nearly all a bird's bones are full of air-cells, 
none but the wing-bones are hollow, and even these in some 
of our strongest fliers are solid. The swifts, for example, 
have long, slender, solid wing-bones. The swallows liave 
only the upper arm-bone hollow. Hollow bones, therefore. 



80 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON, 

are not necessary. The first thing absolutely required is 
strength to stand all strains put upon the wing ; the second is 
surface enough to fasten the muscles, tendons, and strong 
flight feathers firmly. We can imagine the wing-bones as 
being made of the right size and shape, and then bored out 
inside until the weight is reduced as much as is safe. We can 
see thus that a long and very slender wing-bone like the swift's 
or s wallow^' s might not perhaps be bored out at all without 
making it liable to break*. 

Lightness is only an advantage, not a necessity in the wing. 
Safety is the prime essential. To secure this the weight is 
never reduced to the danger point, and a number of neat 
devices are arranged to guard against accidents. If you 
examine the wing of a chicken you will see that while there 
is considerable freedom of movement in the joints as they 
lie by the side in the closed wing, as soon as the wing is 
extended the joints lock and become rigid, so that the wing 
cannot be twisted back by any sudden flaw. Only at the 
shoulder is there any flexibility, and this is guarded by the 
strong muscles that draw the wing up and down. 

Thus w^e see how perfectly the bird's wing is planned to 
secure speed and safety with the least exertion. It is not 
so simple as at first appeared, and there is still more which 
we shall have no time to study. 



A FEATHEK. 

In order to understand how the bird's wing can resist the 
pressure of the air^ we must examine the wing-quill of some 
large bird. Our Christmas or Thanksgiving turkey may 
furnish us with a stout wing-feather, or we may pick some 
up in the parks in summer when the ducks and geese are 
moulting, or we may, if nothing better can be obtained, pull 
a feather from the turkey-tail duster, remembering always that 
we have a tail-feather, not a wing-feather. But having pro-' 
eured a broad-webbed feather, study it carefully. Eub your 
linger along the webs to test its elasticity. ISTotice the effect 
Df pressing it in different directions and observe how it 
stretches under pressure like a piece of jersey cloth, breaking 
apart only under rough usage or great strain, and readily 
being coaxed back into place again. 

What makes the web of the feather so elastic ? The ques- 
tion is not easy to answer clearly, for a feather is complicated 
and its parts are minute. With the unaided eye we see too 
little and with the microscope we see too much. We shall 
understand best by taking for the first a feather whose parts 
can be readily made out without a microscope. An ostrich 
plume, for example, is made up of a multitude of little 
plumes, called barbs, attached to a quill, or shaft: and each 
of these barbs is itself a miniature plume with its own shaft 
and barbs, to which is given the name of barbiiles. Few 
feathers show the barbules as plainly as these plumes of the 
ostrich, but the ostrich's barbules are not connected, so the 
G 81 



82 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 

plumes would be wholly useless for flight even if the wings 
were large enough to lift the bird. 

In the long feathers of the peacock's tail-coverts we see a 
feather that is fringed with scattered disconnected barbs near 
the base, but is tipped with interlocking barbs. We notice too 
that the barbs are set upon the shaft at an angle, so that where 
they come close together they overlap like clapboards on a 
house ; and the barbules, being hooked at the end, catch hold of 
the barb next in front of them, and hold to it. Thus at the tip 
of the peacock's feather there is the beginning of a true web. 
The barbules, we notice, are all upon the upper side of the 
barb, or upon the upper edge of the barb-shaft, if we observe 
more closely ; for the barb-shafts have been greatly flattened, 
and they lie side by side like the thin leaves we see beneath 
a toadstool on turning it over. This is an arrangement to 
give stiffness without increasing the weight, and it greatly 
strengthens the feather to bear the upward pressure of the air. 

In the hawk and eagle this arrangement is even more remark- 
able, though we cannot see it so easily. And in these strong- 
flying birds the barbules interlock much more firmly, so that 
the feather is impervious to air, and is stiff enough to resist 
the pressure of the wind. 

Without a microscope we cannot see the little barbicels, split 
up like shavings partly cut from a stick, and like them hooked 
at the ends, which reach out from barbule to barbule binding 
the feather together still more closely. Some of the other 
arrangements are too minute to be seen by the naked eye and 
not easily understood from description, but in every part we 
find the feather wonderfully planned to resist the pressure of 
the air without the slightest unnecessary weight. 

These little barbules have to hold tight to each other; for 
if they lost their grip the wind would blow up through the 



A FEATHER. 83 

gap, and much of the effectiveness of the feather wouhl be 
lost. If a bird is to fly well it must have firmly webbed 
feathers, and all flying birds have them. If the ostrich had 
wings as large as thunderclouds, he could not fly unless his 
airy plumes were replaced by good quills fit to beat down 
the air under them. 

We observe that all the long quills overlap each other like 
the shingles of a roof, and that the unevenly webbed primaries 
lie with their narrow edge uppermost, and their wide web 
caught under the quill next nearer to the body. This greatly 
aids in making the wing air-tight ; for, on the downward 
stroke, the wide web is pressed so firmly against the strong 
quill and stiff outer web of the next feather that the air cannot 
pass through. 

But on the up stroke there is nothing to hold the weak 
web, which is borne down by the air, and thus the pressure 
on the wing is relieved. While this would happen anyway, 
it is such a help to the bird in flying that a special appa- 
ratus is provided along the back of the forearm for turning 
the secondaries on edge to let the air pass through on the 
upward stroke. By these arrangements the bird is able to 
press down a large quantity of air with every wing-beat, but 
is not required to lift an almost equally large amount when 
the wing rises. The inability to do this is what makes the 
bat so much less swift and capable upon the wing, although 
in comparison with the weight of his body his Aving area is 
very much greater than the bird's. 



THE BIED m THE AIR. 

As long ago as King Solomon, who was the first naturalist, 
'•the way of the bird in the air " was one of the stock mysteries 
for men to wonder over. How does a bird fly ? It is only 
recently that the secret has been discovered. 

In order to fly a bird must have wings large enough to 
support his weight, and muscles strong enough to move his 
wings; there seems to be nothing else required beyond a 
proper adjustment of power and supporting surface. We do 
not at first observe any such wonderful adaptations in wings 
as we saw in the loon's foot to fit it for a life in the water — 
merely more or less wing, longer or shorter, pointed or rounded. 
But the wonderful thing is that the .bird can fly at all. 

Here we have the problem in its simplest form : how is an 
eagle, weighing ten pounds, to raise himself in the air by 
flapping two broad fans that spread from tip to tip some seven 
feet ? Some say that his hollow bones and the air-sacs in his 
body help to lift him, — as if a bird were a balloon. But a 
balloon, if filled with ai7% would rise no more than a grocery 
bag blown full and tied ; a balloon is always filled with a gas 
lighter than air. An eagle can never, by any kind of puffing 
himself up with air, diminish that ten pounds in weight, 
even by a single ounce. The balloon theory finds two other 
obstacles — a balloon must sail before the wind, and it can 
travel no faster than the breeze that bears it, while the bird's 
speed is voluntary, and he usually prefers to fly against the 
wind. The bird's power to fill himself with air does not 
account for his flying. 

84 



THE BIRD IN THE AIR, 



86 



3 
3 



Q 

d 




86 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 

Others say that the bird flies like a kite, and this is partly 
right. The bird's body does act very much like the string of 
the kite, serving as a weight to hold it steady. But the kite 
cannot lift the boy at the end of the string; if it could, the 
kite would fall just as we see it do when the string breaks. 

That laughable story for boys, ^^ Phaeton Eogers/' tells us 
how Phaeton made his great kite draw his w^agon down the 
road, and how the kite ran aw^ay ^vith him while the whole 
town raced after to find out what the matter was. Xow we 
know that the kite would not fly at all unless it could keep 
a taut string; and the faster the wagon moved the nearer it 
would be to outrunning the kite, so that it is hardly probable 
that Phaeton's wagon would travel as fast as the story says. 
Did you never underrun your kite and bring it down even 



Fig. 18. Gulls Flying — From Instantaneous Photograph. 
(After Marey.) 

(The dotted line shoAvs successive positions of wrist joint in flight.) 

when there was a good breeze ? Now m most instances a 
bird outruns the breeze, and he has no stationary weight; 
for his body, the weight, travels as fast as the wings. So we 
see that a bird does not resemble the kite. 

More nearly does the bird resemble the swimmer, who supports 
himself in the water by striking out with his arms, pushing him- 
self up and forward by the resistance of the water to his stroke. 
The bird rises and moves ahead by the forward and downward 
sweep of his wrings, falls a little in air as he again raises them, 
and once more moves ahead and up with the new stroke. 



THE BTBT) IN THE ATR, 87 

Like the swimmer he advances by a series of undulations, 
a long incline upward (Fig. 19) when his wings press the air, a 
little drop downward as he raises them to get them in position 
once more. But the bird's stroke is different from the swim- 
mer's. As soon as his wings are at their highest point, they 
begin to turn forward and downward with a strong, even 
sweep that lifts the body and carries it ahead. 

The air is driven backward less by the direction in which 
the wing is moved than by the curvature of the under surface, 
by its general shape, and by the rotary motion at the shoulder 
joint. When it is necessary to recover for the next stroke, 
see by the picture how neatly it is done. The wing bends at 
the joint, leaving only half as great a resisting surface, the 




Fig. 19. Gulls Flying — 50 Images per Second. (After Marey. ) 

(The line shows the centre of gravity in successive positions.) 

secondaries roll on edge, removing still more pressure; the 
body drops a little by its own weight, and up flies the wing 
into place so quickly that the camera can get but two pictures, 
though it takes four of the descending stroke. Please notice 
carefully that the wing-beat is a forward motion ; the tip of 
the wing never drags far back ; even when it is ready to be 
raised it is still on a line with the eye. The bird is always 
reaching ahead to cut into air not yet disturbed by his own 
movement. 

We know that the bird rises by the resistance of the air, 
using his wings as levers and the air as a fulcrum. But how 



88 STRUCTUBE AXD COMPABISOjY. 

does he get his start ? How does he guide his course ? How 
does he stop ? 

Watch different birds taking flight. The old crow on the 
fence-rail^ if there is no breeze, throws himself forward and 
drops a little, which gives him his first wing stroke with 
all the momentum of his falling body. When there is a 
wind he turns to face it, even if he intends to fly in the other 
direction, stretches up on his legs to his full height, and lifts 
his wings. The wind fills them. He leans down upon it, and 
his first stroke gives him headway and bears him up. 

Many birds give a little leap in air as a help in rising from 
the ground. From a tree it is easy for any bird to get upon 
the wing, but starting from a level surface the diSiculties are 
greater and they increase with the weight of the bird, whether 
he be a good flyer or not. The turkey-buzzard, a majestic 
bird on the wing, makes a slow, ungraceful start. The eagle, 
even when in danger of his life, has been reported to stop 
to run in awkward leaps several rods because he could not at 
once gain momentum enough for his wings to get their 
leverage. The loon is habitually in a worse plight, for he 
can get no chance to spring from the water, and must get his 
momentum by running along the surface, flapping his wings. 
Even then his wings are too small to lift his heavy body unless 
there is a breeze blowing. 

What is momentum ? — an impulse to go ahead. A body 
at rest has only a tendency to stay still, its inertia, until some- 
thing sets it moving. The bird starting to fly must overcome 
its inertia. If it can once get the going-ahead motion, all it 
needs to do is to hold its body in the right position and lift 
itself with its wings. 

Holding the body in this or that position alters the direction 
of the bird's flight. If he wishes to rise he throws the body 



THE BIRD IN THE AIR, 89 

into a more or less vertical position, according to the angle at 
which he wants to ascend; if he wishes to glide down, he just 
lets himself fall forward. The straighter the body is held the 
straighter up the bird goes. The straighter it is held the more 
directly he descends. 

If you should ever see a game bird ^Hower'^ you will notice 
how erect the body is. I know no flight among our American 
birds so nearly vertical as the towering of the ruffed grouse, 
but it is an exhibition not often seen unless one is with a gun- 
ner, as the birds seldom or never tower unless wounded in the 
head. 

We have already described the forward movement of the 
bird in studying the stroke. Let us notice again the peculiar 
folding of the upraised wing and the rolling secondaries which 
spill the air and make the work of lifting the wing both quick 
and easy. 

Speed in flight is attained in two ways — by the shape of tlie 
wings, and by the quickness with which they are moved. A 
small-winged bird may fly very fast by moving its wings witli 
great rapidity, and a large-winged bird may be a slow flyer if 
it move its wings very slowly. But if two birds move their 
wings the same number of times a minute, that one will fly 
the faster which has the longer wings, because it has the 
greater leverage on the air. We shall notice too that all swift- 
flying birds have very strong primaries, and the stronger flyers 
have also very long primaries. Long wings, long primaries, 
strong primaries, make the work easier for the bird. 

Very swift birds one may expect to find with narrow wings. 
The reason is that the wings are levers and their length and 
strength give them their efficiency without regard to their 
width. So the swifts and swallows and terns liave very long, 
narrow wings. Birds with wings both wide and long must 



90 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 

either be rather slow flyers or else in the habit of soaring, for 
which they need a large area of wing. But a very long-winged 
bird, even though its wings are narrow, may be able to soar if, 
like the albatross and man-of-war bird, its wings are long enough 
to furnish the required area in spite of their narrowness. 

In steering the tail does most of the work, though a part of 
the work is, and the whole may be, done by the wings. Birds 
making quick evolutions are commonly long-tailed. The terns, 
goshawk, Cooper's and sharp-shinned hawks are good examples 
of this. On the other hand, the chimney-swift is rather short- 
tailed. Birds with short tails and long legs usually trail the 
legs behind in flight, so that a boy of my acquaintance described 
a heron as '' a big bird with only one tail feather, which was a 
yard long.'' The loon also, though his legs are not long, 
stretches them out behind him with the webs of the feet held 
close together to steer him. Finally, a bird that loses his tail 
has to learn how to steer himself. A cat-bird that I once knew, 
having lost his tail by accident, was hard put to tell where he 
was going until he learned to steer a more certain course with 
his wings. 

In hovering, also, the tail plays an important part. Watch 
the humming-bird before the flower, the king-bird over the 
grass, the sparrow-hawk above the hole of the meadow-mouse. 
You will see that the tail is held full spread and nearly at 
right angles to the body, unless the body itself is dropped, as 
it often is in the humming-birds. Thus the tail holds a large 
part of the air fanned back by the wings, and acts as a drag 
on the bird to hold him stationary or nearly so. 

One of the prettiest sights I ever saw was a common tern 
that, attracted by my fishing, came and hovered within ten feet 
of me, keenly curious, his scarlet bill and feet, black cap, 
silvery mantle, and white body gay as a picture against the 



THE BIRD IN THE ATR. 91 

blue water of the bay. For nearly a minute he held himself 
as stationary as if suspended on a wire, hovering with head 
bent down, wings partly flexed, and his long forked tail dipped 
almost at right angles to the body and spread so wide that it 
looked nearly square across the end — a position in which the 
forces that naturally would have borne him ahead were bal- 
anced by others that held him back. 

Stopping is accomplished by both wings and tail. A bird in 
swift flight, wishing to check his course immediately, spreads 
his tail to the fullest extent, throws up his wings, and drops 
as nearly vertically as his momentum will permit him. Watch 
pigeons and you will observe that they are experts in this 
method of alighting. But commonly a bird merely draws in 
his wings, spreads his tail more or less to check his motion, 
and comes gliding down on an easy slant. 

Aside from these necessary motions the bird has a number 
of tricks no more a part of flying than riding on one wheel is a 
part of bicycling, but very pretty sport. We sometimes see a 
bird glide until his momentum is gone, when, with a stroke or 
two, he sends himself forward and rests on his wings till the 
new impulse is exhausted. 

Sometimes birds play with the wind, mounting by merely 
turning to face it, and then sliding down the breeze a short 
distance, when they turn once more to the wind and let it raise 
them. Again one bird, the tumbler pigeon, is noted for its 
habit of falling backward in mid-air, a habit thought by some 
to have its root in the method by which wild pigeons some- 
times escape the onslaught of a hawk. 

But the most beautiful flight trick of all is the common one 
of soaring. No one knows all about it, and yet it is easy to see 
that under most conditions the bird is playing with a breeze, 
letting himself be borne up as he faces it, gliding downward a 



92 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON, 

little as lie wheels about the circle, which will once more bring 
him breast to the wind. Hawks are among our best soaring 
land-birds; but some sea-birds excel all others in the sport, 
wheeling about hour after hour on motionless pinions, keeping 
their course and their elevation entirely by some slight adjust- 
ment of the body or by an inclination of the tail. Sailors 
declare that an albatross will follow a ship for days together, 
circling above her without rest. It is certain that on moon- 
light nights the man-of-war bird may be seen for hours to- 
gether floating far above the sea. Nor is a soaring bird easily 
disturbed. I have seen a soaring goshawk, when a bullet 
clipped a secondary from one of its wings, answer with its 
wild scream of defiance, and without haste or change of motion 
fill out an unbroken curve of its ascending spiral. 



COMPARING FEET. 

Not until we see many birds together do we realize how 
very unlike they are. No bird looks out of place in its own 
home unless we catch it doing something quite out of the 
ordinary. When a wounded heron tries to swim^ or a breeding 
sandpiper alights in a tree, it looks strange and uncouth. But 
what could be more in keeping than a sandpiper trotting 
along a pond-side, or a still heron standing in a pool ? 
Structure and habits are so interwoven that from either one 
something may be inferred of the other. 

Does a bird spend his life on the wing chasing fish or 
insects ? Then look to find him furnished with very long 
wings and very short legs. Short legs, as in the humming- 
birds, the night-hawks, the swifts, the terns, and others may 
be taken as almost certainly indicating that the bird has long 
wings ; for if he does not get his food afoot he must get it on 
the wing, or else spend all his time in the water. Almost 
the only exception to this is the woodpecker family, where 
short legs indicate nothing as to the shape of the wings, their 
convenience in climbing being enough to explain why they 
are short. 

On the other hand, long legs are a sign that they have some 
peculiar use, probably to help the birds to get their food. 
Though long-legged birds often have very good wings, we find 
that they use their wings chiefly for safety, and depend upon 
their legs in picking up a living. It is always safe to infer 
that a long-legged bird finds most of its food in shallow water, 

93 



94 



STBUCTUBE AND COMPARTSON. 



and that a web-footed bird seeks its living in water too deep 
for wading. 

When we compare all the different birds, we see that there 
are no great jumps from one extreme to another, — from very 
short legs to those ridiculously long, from tiny bills to those 
enormously long or thick or wide. Somewhere in nature we 
may expect to find a bird which just fills in the gap and 
makes a graded series. 

From the man-of-war bird with his abbreviated legs, for 
which, short as they are, he seems to have almost no use at 
all, to the stilt perched up on his absurd, artificial-looking 
shanks, extends all the long procession of birds — the terns 
and gulls and the whole race of sandpipers and others that 
take their food less and less by pursuing it 
on the wing, and more and more by running 
or wading after it. The changes, after all, 
are gradual. 

Watch the growth of the idea of a swim- 
ming foot and see how the need of more 
or less surface to oppose the water is met 
in different ways. The first hint we get of 
a web-foot is in the slight semij^almatioii of 
some of the sandpipers. We need not 
suppose necessarily that this is a sign that 
the sandpiper swims much, for we find 
semipalmation in some land-birds, even in 
the hen, and we know that this is to bear 
them up in walking over snow. Perhaps in 
the sandpipers the principal use of this slight 

webbing is to help them in walking over soft ^^* ' * ^^^te 

Foot of Phala- 
mud. But soon it becomes evident that it ^^^^ (slightly 

aids in swimming, and the little phalaropes, reduced). 




Fig. 20. Semipal- 
MATE Foot of 
Sandpiper (Life 

Size). 




COMPARING FEET. 



95 



close cousins of the sandpipers, have the webbing extended 
along both sides of their toes, in a scalloped edge. 

Again we find another variation for increasing the surface 
in the excised web, in which the space between the toes is still 





Fig. 22. Excised Web Foot of 
Black Tern (Life Size). 



Fig. 23. Palmate or Webbed Fooi 
OF Duck (reduced). 



more filled up, though the word signifies that the foot looks as 
if it had once been full-webbed and then cut out, or excised. 
In the ducks and geese we see the webbing carried out to the 
toe-nails, and the surface increased by spreading the toes wide 
apart. In the loons it is still further increased b}^ lengthening 
the toes, which make the 



webs long as well as wide. 

But one other device seems 

possible, and that we find in 

the totipalmate birds, where 

all four toes are joined by 

the web. Observe, please, 

that in these the outer toe is 

longest while in all other web-footed birds the third, or middle. 

toe exceeds the others. 

Most palmate birds swim with alternate strokes, now right, 
now left, or with one foot a little behind the other, seldom 
with both exactly together. The swans often swim with only 




Fig. 24. Totipalmate Foot of 
Gannet (greatly reduced). 



96 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 

one foot, sticking the other up behind. To keep a straight 
course a swan swimming with one foot must ^' bear off '' with 
every stroke, just as a canoeman does when using a single- 
bladed paddle ; otherwise he would swim in a circle. 

Some of the totipalmate birds are said to swim with both 
feet together. We can see that such a stroke would be a very 
strong, effective one. The feet would be held together like 
an inverted triangle ; and the longest, strongest toes, the outer 
ones, would form the lower edge of a V where the greatest 
resistance would be met. With feet so placed a powerful 
backward and downward stroke would bring every part of the 
webbing into full use, and give a great impulse to the bird. 




Fig. 25. Zygodactyl (or Yoke-toed) Foot of Woodpecker 
(Life Size). 

After we get into the higher orders the feet differ less 
noticeably; yet many oddities occur. Xotice the yoke-toed 
foot of the woodpeckers, the cuckoos, and the parrots, or the 
still odder foot of the kingfisher, in which two of the toes are 
grown together for a part of their length. 

What is the origin or use of such a foot never seems to have 




COMPARING FEET, 97 

been guessed. We can see^ however, that the kingfishers use 
their feet only in clasping small perches, and that jjarts 
so little exercised would naturally be small and weak as we 
lind these. Instead of learning the hard names for these 
forms of feet, it may be better to tell you that dactyl comes 
from an old Greek word for a 
finger or toe, and that any 
word of which it forms a part 
always tells you something of ^^^^' 26. Hyndactylous Eoot of 
fingers or toes. Syndactylous Kingfisher (Life Size). 

means ^^with toes joined together ^^; zygodactylous means 
" yoke-toed '^ ; now what does pterodactyl mean ? Look it up, 
and you will have mastered another word from the Greek, which 
is often used in science, as in apteryx and in other compounds. 
We must not forget to notice the differences in birds' claws. 
Here, too, are all sorts of variations, hinting something of the 
bird's ways of living. Do not a hen's short, stubby nails look 
like those of a hand that has scratched in the ground ? The 
crooked claws of the hawk and owl, sharp and shining, 
indicate a very different mode of living. Birds of prey 
keep their claws in scrupulously neat condition, never pressing 
them against any hard perch 

but lifting them as a cat lifts ^^^^ ' "%^^ 
her claws, or turning them to 
one side that they may not be 
blunted. Whenever we see a 
bird with extremely long nails 
on the hind toes, like the long- Fig. 27. Foot of Loxgspur (Life 
spurs, the skylarks, the horned ^mze). 

larks, and the meadow lark, we may be sure that the bird 
frequents the ground. Probably he will be found to be strictly 
terrestrial. 

H 




98 STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 

While most birds have claws that are flattened or hollowed 
beneath, the claws of birds of prey are generally rounded. 
Yet hawks' claws have a slight groove beneath, owls' claws 
have a flange on one side, and the foot of the fish-hawk, or 
osprey, has a rounded or terete claw without either groove or 
flange. Why these differences ? Perhaps no one can explain 
them any more than why the long-legged heron and the short- 
legged night-hawk — birds of utterly dissimilar habit and form 
— should each have a comb-like ridge along the inner edge of 
the middle toe-nail. The fact that differences exist in birds 
of similar habits and that likenesses are found in birds of dis- 
similar habits shows how hard it is to make a theory that will 
cover all cases. 



COMPARING BILLS. 

To walk through a museum^ looking at the different kinds 
of bills that the birds have, and wondering how they are used, 
is almost as much fun as choosing the pretty things in a store 
window. Until one tries it, it is hard to believe that there 
can be so many shapes, — noses that tip up and tip down, 
Eoman-nosed and straight-nosed birds, and a hundred noses 
that we have no name for. For bills are noses — and mouths 
too. The bird^s nostrils always open somewhere along the 
upper portion of the bill, so that the whole upper mandible 
forms an exaggerated nose. Indeed, one of our commonest 
names for describing a certain kind of nose, the word aquiline, 
indicates the resemblance of a bold, humped nose to the 
hooked beak of aquila, the eagle. 



EiG. 28. Head of Swift. 

Among our North 'American birds the smallest bills of all 
are those of insect-hunters like the swifts, swallows, aud 
night-hawks, which have merely a tiny triangle of bill pierced 
by the two nostrils. But what a mouth they have I Open it 

99 

LofC. 



100 



STEUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 



and the whole head seems to have disappeared down its own 
throat. Though the bill itself is so small, the fissure, or gape, 
of the mouth extends nearly the whole length of the jaws, so 
that the mouth begins to open as far back as the eye. 

The night-hawks and whip-poor-wills, which fly with their 
mouths open, have the sides of the gape fenced in with rows 
of bristles which prevent insects trapped in the wide mouth 
from escaping at the sides. 

The swallows and swifts, which fly with closed mouths and 
catch each insect separately with a snap, have few bristles, 
or, in most cases, none. These birds that hawk after insects 
have very small tongues. The swifts have a pouch just be- 
neath the tongue, in which they keep the flies that they carry 
home to their little ones. 




Fig. 29. Head of Long-billed Cuklew. 



Of the long-billed birds in this country none compares with 
the long-billed curlew, which uses his sensitive slender probe 
in searching out food that lies deeply buried in the mud. 
Near relatives of his, as the snipe and the woodcock, have 



COMPARING BILLS. 101 

bills, equally sensitive and nearly as long in proportion to 
their own size, and capable of being opened at the tip with- 
out opening the whole length of the gape. I have noticed 
the same peculiarity in woodpeckers' bills, and these, like 
the snipe, seek their food by digging it out of deejj holes. 
Sometimes when walking through alder ground, or in muddy 
places, we may see the '^ borings " made by woodcock and 
snipe where they have fed at night. At first we might mistake 
them for wormholes, but there are no ^^ casts" about, and 
they are too numerous and too near together to be made by 
worms, and if you look intently perhaps you may see the 
prints of a bird's foot. 

The white pelican's is the longest bill without reference to 
the bird's size. Watch him some day in the park and see 
the flat upper mandible pointing straight down his breast as 
he sits thinking, or lifted with its pendulous pouch beneath 
as he looks up in anger or expectation". Surely this bird with 
a bag is grotesque enough. 

A bill hooked at the tip is almost a sure sign thrit the bird 
lives on animal food, and the sharpness of the tip -uid decision 
of the curve are guides to the strength and liveliness or to the 
toughness of the flesh of the prey it conte^uls with. So we 
find a slight hook at the tip of the bill of the insect-eating 
flycatchers, a stronger point to the fish-ea;ting frigate pelican's, 
and an abrupt hook in the bills of the hawks, owls, and 
eagles. 

Some fish-eating and insect-eating birds, as the terns, herons, 
and humming-birds, have straight bills; but a hooked beak, 
which is the characteristic mark of the raptores or birds of 
prey, often indicates a more or less raptorial character. 

Sometimes a hooked beak may have another use. as in parrots 
and cross-bills. But you will notice that the hawk's bill is 



102 



STRUCTUBE AND COMPARISON, 



made for tearing food, the parrot's for crushing it, and the 
cross-bill's for reaching into out-of-the-way crevices, and that 
the hawk's beak is really far less like a parrot's, for example, 
than it is like a shrike's, whose habits are more like the 
hawk's. 




Fig. 30. Bills or (i) Frigate Bird, (2) Hawk, (^) Shrike, (^^ Vireo, 
AND (^) Bluebird. 

Of the compressed bills, — that is, those that are very deep 
but thin, — the puffin's is a prominent example; but even odder 
is the bill of the ani, or tick-eater, a bird sometimes seen in 
Florida, which is thinner for its height than the puffin's, and 
more rounded at the tip. The bird is a relative of the cuckoos, 
and, as its name shows, gets part of its food by eating the 



COMPAItlNQ BTLLS. 103 

ticks and other vermin that cling to the legs and hides of cattle 
in hot countries. 

The opposite of this form, the depressed or flattened bill, is 
well shown in the duck tribe, some of which have very broad, 
flat bills. The broadest of these are ridged along the inside 
with little laminae, or plates, that act like a strainer, holding 
the selected morsels tight, while the mud and water are 
drained away. This is a convenience to birds that pick up 
most of their food under water and must take it without 
cleansing. The flamingo's bill is furnished with a similar 
strainer. In spite of its size, the flamingo's bill is extremely 
light, being made up of a spongy, bony tissue, full of air-cells. 
Few large bills are as heavy as they look to be, since, unless 
great strength is needed, the interior of the bill is made up of 
this cellular or aerated bone, as it is called. 

If you were to draw all the kinds of bills you could imagine, 
I could agree to match most of them from birds now^ living 
in some part of the world. Do you make one that turns 
down at the tip ? You have already seen the long-billed 
curlew's ; and the bills of some of the foreign humming- 
birds and sun-birds are curved in a quarter-circle at the 
tip. But if you make one that curves up, we can match that, 
too, in the avocet, a bird of our shores and prairies, wdth his 
tilted bill, and as great an oddity as any. With such a bill 
one would suppose that any bird must be handicapped in 
getting a living, yet the avocet seems to fare well. 

" It is a beautiful sight," writes one who knows them. '• to 
see a flock of these birds feeding. Wading along in the shal- 
lows, the bills are moved regularly from side to side, through 
the water or mud, with the motion a man makes when mowing, 
each bird keeping to the side and a little behind the leader, and 
if the water is deep the head and neck are frequently immersed. 



104 STRUCmBK AND COMPARISON. 

They advance into the water up to their bellies, and if it should 
suddenly deepen they keep right on by swimming, not at all 
incommoded by the loss of their foothold.'' 

Here is a shape you would hardly have dared invent, a bird 
with the under mandible much longer than the upper and as 
thin as a knife-edge. There are but three such bills in the 
world, and all belong to different species of skimmers. 




Fig. 31. Head of Black Skimmer. 

^^This bird,'' says Wilson, ^^is formed for skimming, while 
on the wing, the surface of the sea for its food, which consists 
of small fish, shrimps, young fry, etc., whose usual haunts are 
near the shore and towards the surface. That the lower man- 
dible, when dipped into and cleaving the water, might not retard 
the bird's way, it is thinned and sharpened like the blade of a 
knife ; the upper mandible, being at such times elevated above 
the water, is curtailed in its length, as being less necessary, 
but tapering gradually to a point, that, on shutting, it may 
offer less opposition. To prevent inconvenience from the 
rushing of the water, the mouth is confined to the mere open- 
ing of the gullet, which indeed prevents mastication taking 
place there; but the stomach, or gizzard, to which this business 
is solely allotted, is of uncommon hardness, strength, and 




pi 
w 

Oh 

o 

o 



CO 

2 






COMPARING BILLS. 105 

muscularity ; far surpassing, in these respects, any other water- 
bird with which I am acquainted. To all these is added a vast 
expansion of wing to enable the bird to sail with sufficient 
celerity while dipping in the water.'' 

It is interesting to know that the young skimmers have the 
mandibles very nearly equal in length. 




4 
Fig. 38. Head of Roseate Spoonbill. 

Of spoonbilled birds we have in this country the well-known 
roseate spoonbill, or pink curlew, of the South, with his bald 
head, and this rare little sandpiper (Fig. 32), that a few times 
has straggled over to our coasts from its Asiatic home. See 
what a dainty poise it has upon the slippery ledge, conhdent 
and alert, not at all awkward, — a true shore-bird, although its 
blunt-ended bill is so unlike the delicate little probe of its 
sandpiper cousins. It looks like an accident to lind a bill 
otherwise unknown except among the family of spoonbills, in a 
group of birds that are noted for the length and true taper of 
their bills ; yet undoubtedly the reason for this form would be 




106 STBUCTUBE AND COMPABISOW. 

fully explained if we knew what food the bird preferred when 
at home. 

We have had bills that turned up and down, but no one 

would admit that a bill that turned 
sideways could be possible except 
by accident. Yet here is that '^ ac- 
cident.'' Every egg laid by this 
little plover produces a bird with 
Fig. 34. Bill of Ckook- the bill crooked to the right. It 
BILLED Plover. jg a New Zealand bird, but unlike 

the spoon-billed sandpiper, it has 
never strayed to our shores. 

What is a bird with such a bill to do ? How can any bird 
be better fitted for his work by having a bill bent to one side 
so that he cannot feed unless his food is on the right side of 
him ? But this bird gets his food by trotting along rocky 
river-beds and picking up small forms of animal life that creep 
in under the loose stones of the dry channels for greater security 
and moisture. Therefore, since his course lies never in a 
straight line and usually in a circular direction, it is no disad- 
vantage to him to travel always in one direction, or perhaps 
it is a decided advantage not to have to turn in his tracks so as 
to face the stone at every stop he makes. 

A very curious point about this bird's coloration is worthy 
of notice. His constant habit of turning to the right leaves 
the left side open to danger ; all his foes must approach him 
on that side. He has across his breast for ornament a black 
band ; and it has been noticed that while this is three-fourths 
of an inch w^ide on the right side, it is not more than half an 
inch wide and is much lighter in shade on the exposed left 
side, thus varying both in width and color. Think of it, — all 
the other birds in the world are bisymmetrical ; that is, alike 



COMPARTNG BILLS. 107 

on both sideSj so that a picture of one side of them is precisely 
like a picture of the other ; but this, the only bird in the world 
that is colored unsymmetrically, is also the only bird that 
moves always in the same direction while feeding, thus keeping 
the same side exposed to its enemies. This is a wonderful 
instance of what is called protective coloration, about which we 
shall soon study. 



EYES AKD CAMEEAS. 

Whex you have longed to own a camera, did it ever occur to 
you that you already had two, and that you could not avoid 
taking pictures all day long unless you closed your eyes ? 

The eye, like the camera, is a box, blackened on the inside 
and divided into two unequal chambers by a partition with a 
lens in it that, like a little round window, is directly in line 
with a hole in the front. These are the essentials of a good 
camera, though the little ^^ pin-hole " cameras that boys some- 
times use are even simpler. 




Fig. 35. Diagram of Human Eye. 
C Cornea. L Lens. / Iris. OX Optic nerve. CP CiUary processes. 



But some one who has owned a camera and who knows all 
about them says that though our eyes may be black inside, and 



108 



EYES AND CAMERAS, 109 

may have lenses and even holes in them (though he lias yet to 
see the hole), they cannot be good cameras unless they have a 
shutter to keep out light when not in use, a diaphragm before 
the lens to exclude the light when it is too strong, a movable 
lens so that they may be focussed, and a sensitive jjlate or 
film for the picture to fall upon. ^^And eyes/' says the man 
who owns the camera, " have no shutters, nor diaphragms, nor 
focus-screws, nor sensitive films/' 

But our eyelids are shutters ; whenever we open our eyes 
we '' make an exposure,'' and we take pictures till we close 
the lids over them. The eye is the first and best of cameras, 
more wonderful than any other. That colored ring, the iris, 
which sometimes is narrow and sometimes wdde, is the device 
which lets in more or less light as it is required. It adjusts' 
itself without thought on our part. The black spot in the 
centre, the pupil, is the hole we spoke of. It is covered by a 
transparent plate, the cornea, which keeps out the dust, but 
through which we can look just as we do through a window. 
The blackness of the pupil is merely a portion of the black 
lining of the inner surface of the eyeball which we see through 
the opening in the iris. Watch the eye of your cat, your dog, 
or any other creature, and observe the way in which the iris 
expands and contracts, and notice the varying shape of the 
pupiL How does the pupil of a horse's or a cow's eye differ 
from a cat's, and how do both differ from a dog's ? 

But if an eye is a camera, how is it focussed ? Xot by 
turning a screw to regulate the distance of the lens from the 
object pictured, but by changing the shape of the lens itself. 
We need not think about this change at all, for it acts of itself, 
or automatically, as we say. It will be long before any camera 
is advertised with an automatic focus. As to sensitive films. 
our eyes are furnished with the best to be had, one that does 



110 



STRUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 



not need to be renewed, and on which any number of pictures 
may be taken, one after the other, and carried to the brain to be 
developed. And the retina, as it is called, takes not only form 
and light and shade, but color. 

We have not tried to explain how we see, because that would 
need much study. It is enough for us to know that our eyes 
have all the parts of a perfect camera, and that they take 
pictures in just the same w^ay. And not only our eyes, but 
those of all beasts, birds, fishes, and reptiles are formed on 
the same plan. Tlie eye of the vertebrate animal is a little 
camera. 

We must not conclude that all eyes are alike, only that 
they all are made on the same plan. They vary in shape and 
size and in some points of construction, just as cameras do, 
but the essential parts are the same. These diagrams of the 




Fig. 36. The Eye of the Hawk and of the Owl. 

CP Ciliary processes. ON Optic nerve. P Pecten. 



eyes of a hawk and an owl show the differences in shape. 
In structure they are almost precisely like our own eyes except 



EYES AND CAMERAS. Ill 

that they have inside them a little folded membrane called the 
pecteti, which our eyes lack. Its use is not known, but it has 
been suggested that it helps to focus the eye instantaneously, 
so that the hawk, swooping from a height, or the gannet, diving 
from the air like an arrow, may always keep a clear and un- 
blurred vision of its prey. Our own eyes could not be adjusted 
for such rapid motion. It is interesting to compare the elon- 
gated eyeball and round lens of the nocturnal owl with the 
flattened eyeball and lens of the diurnal hawk. Contrary to 
popular opinion, the owl can see very well by day also, because 
his eye is capable of great adjustment to the amount of light, 
and can either collect the scattered, feeble rays of dusk and 
darkness, or exclude the strong glare of day. 

Eyes are not only the most perfect cameras, but they are also. 
the smallest. Small as our own eyes are, there are others far 
tinier. Think of the birds about us, the swallow chasing the 
fly, the vireo tripping along a bough, the chickadee clinging to 
a twig, searching for food too small for us to discover. Probably 
the smallest cameras known are the eyes of the humming-birds. 
The tiny Princess Helena humming-bird of Cuba is only two 
and a quarter inches from bill-tip to tail-end, and its eye is 
about the size of the head of a round-headed bhack pin. Can 
there be a smaller camera than this ? But the little humming- 
birds, when they first open their eyes, are not nearly as large 
as their mother, and yet their eyes are as perfect as hers. 
Surely these are the smallest cameras in all the w^orld. 



THE lEIS OF BIEDS. 

If we look at the birds about us, we shall soon notice that 
not all of them have the same colored eyes. Can you tell 
the color of a dove's iris? of a crow-blackbird's? of a gray 
parrot's ? You will find more difference among them than 
among boys and girls with their brown, blue, and gray eyes. 
When we begin to observe these differences, we ask certain 
questions as : How many colors do birds' eyes have ? Is the 
color always the same in the same kind of bird? Is it the 
same all through the bird's life ? 

There are birds with white, blue, green, red, purple, orange, 
yellow, and brown eyes. Black eyes are among the rarest, for 
most of our black-eyed birds, like our black-eyed boys and 
girls, have a dark brown iris. If you ever held an English 
sparrow in your hand, you may have noticed what a clear 
brown the iris is. The old pelican waddling about the park 
has a white iris ; the puffins are blue-eyed ; cormorants are 
green-eyed; most wild pigeons have eyes of some shade of 
pink or purple ; while owls and herons are usually yellow-eyed, 
and hawks are either yellow, red, or brown eyed. Nearly all 
our small birds have dark brown eyes. We must remember 
that it is only the iris which is colored; the pupil of every 
healthy eye is black. Notice the eyes of different animals. 
Did you ever see a white-eyed horse ? or a blue-eyed cat ? or a 
yellow-eyed dog ? What are the commonest colors seen in the 
eyes of horses, dogs, and cats ? 

Naturalists think that wild birds and animals of the same 

112 



THE IBIS OF BTBDH, 



113 




kind and the same age always have the same colored eyes. 
Often this makes an easy way to tell one species from another. 
The red-eyed vireo and 
the white - eyed vireo 
could easily be distin- 
guished by the color of 
the eye alone. So, too, 
the common towhee of 
the North with his red eye is readily distin- 
guished from the white-eyed towhee of the 
South, which otherwise is almost precisely 
similar. But here we find a curious fact. 
The white-eyed towhee is not a distinct spe- 
cies, but is a race of the red-eyed, and we find 
that part way between the northern and the 
southern limits of the two forms, — in Geor- 
gia, for example, — the towhees are neither Fig. 37. — Head of 
white-eyed nor red-eyed, but have brownish ^^^^'^^^^^(^^^^^^)' 
eyes. 

iV curious in- 
stance of seasonal 
change has been 
observed in the 
Louisiana egret. 

In the spring, during nesting time, 
both the male and female have a I'ed 
eye, surrounded by bare blue skin. 
In the female the iris gradually 
changes to yellow after the breeding 
season is over, while the blue skin 
becomes yellow also. The male keeps 
his red eye. 
I 




Fig. 38. — Hkad of Goos- 
ander cFemalk). 



114 STBUCTUBE ANT) COMPABISON. 

A notable difference in colors in the two sexes is that of the 
sheldrake, or goosander, which we have already studied. The 
male's eye is red, the female's yellow. The red-breasted mer- 
ganser, however, has a red eye in both sexes, and the hooded 
merganser has a yellow eye in both sexes. What is odd is that 
though the males of the first two species are remarkably 
different, the females are so nearly alike that they can hardly 
be told apart except by the color of their eyes and by their 
nesting habits. 

There is sometimes a change of color with age in birds as in 
cats. A young crow, or raven, is as blue-eyed as a kitten, but as 
he grows older his eye becomes as black as his reputation. I 
have seen a young goshawk, taken from the nest, which was 
blue-eyed, though at a later period the goshawk's eyes are 
yellow, and at maturity they are red. From blue to yellow, 
yellow to red, what a change for one bird ! 

We have seen that the color may vary with age, sex, and 
season, or may even form a racial mark, as in the towhee, yet 
that it is usually constant in the same individual and species 
through life. 

There is another interesting thing about birds' eyes. Any 
one who has watched an owl will remember the third eyelid, 
or '^ winking membrane," which the owl draws sleepily over 
his eyes. You may observe something similar, though not 
nearl}^ so complete, iii your cat when she is lying on the rug 
half asleep. Even in your own eye there is a trace of this 
winking membrane in the little folds of membrane in the 
inner corner of the eye; but you have no power to draw it 
over the eye as the cat and the owl do. 



WHITE BLACKBIRDS AISTD OTHEPv FREAKS. 

It is the hope of seeing something new and strange that keerjs 
the naturalist always enthusiastic: there is always a chance of 
seeing white blackbirds, and he lives in expectation of the rare 
chance falling to him. 

White blackbirds are not of uncommon occurrence. I have 
seen the cowbird, the rusty grackle, the Brewer's blackbird, 
and the red-winged blackbird — besides crows and meadow- 
larks, which are relatives of the blackbird's — either partially 
or entirely white. Of course these were mounted birds, for so 
much good luck would not fall to any one person in the field. 
It is an accident of nature, but by no means a rare one, that 
every now and then a bird will be hatched without the usual 
amount of coloring matter in its feathers, in which case it will 
be either wholly or partly white. These accidents are called 
albinos, or partial albinos, as the case may be. When the bird 
is an entire albino, it usually has pink eyes. Similar accidents 
occur among animals with the same accompaniment of pink 
eyes if the albinism is entire. The white of such birds is seldom 
pure white, oftener a yellowish, or grayish, or dirty white, and 
ofteneronly partial, being confined to a few wing or tail feathers, 
or a patch of grayish white about the head and neck. Among 
English sparrows it is not unusual to see a bird thus marked 
Take note of such birds to see Avhether you ever meet them 
again; they are curious, but have no other interest. 

It is very odd that albinism ap})ears to run in some genera 
of birds more than it does in others. White crows are not un- 

115 



116 STRUCTUBE AND COMPARISON. 

common^ nor are white blackbirds, as has been said. I have 
seen a white meadow-lark also almost pure white with only a 
faint yellow tinge on the breast, yet I have never heard of 
an albino among the jays and orioles, though they are nearly 
related. Ducks are frequently albinistic, and so are quail and 
grouse ; but hawks are rarely, if ever, affected in this way. 
Sparrows are another family among which albinos are com- 
mon. I have had a snow-white eaves swallow brought to me, 
and have seen a cherry bird all white except the yellow tip of 
the tail. Thrushes also not infrequently show signs of albi- 
nism, but I have never seen an albino warbler nor a white fly- 
catcher. This is not saying that these freaks will not be 
discovered by sharp eyes; rather it shows that in certain 
groups the accident is rarer than in others. 

Even rarer than albinism and certainly far prettier is an 
occasional paleness of plumage that gives the whole bird a 
delicate cafe-au-lait color — just the shade of coffee with cream. 
I have seen this in ducks, and a remarkable case of it in a robin, 
where the whole head and upper parts were delicate creamy 
brown, while the breast was as red as in an ordinary robin. 

Another accident sometimes noticed is just the reverse of 
albinism. Instead of being white, the bird is black or much 
darker colored than usual, sometimes a dark chocolate or 
deep blackish brown. This is called melanism^ from the Greek 
word for black, just as albinism comes from the Latin for white. 
Melanism is most frequent among the hawks, which so seldom 
show traces of unusual whiteness. In certain hawks, as the 
red-tailed, Swainson's, and the rough-legged, this occurs so 
often that it is probably not an accident, but a '' color phase.'' 
Robins are particularly subject to melanotic changes. Some- 
times they have been reported "as black as grackles.'' 

While albinism seems to be permanent, melanism is not 



WHITE BLACKBIRDS AND OTHER FREAKS, 117 

always so. Caged birds sometimes turn dark in moulting, 
and then moult back again. A robin that was black in 
infancy afterward acquired white wings and a white tail ; 
while another that was caged for six years was normally 
colored for the first two years, on the third showed some 
white and some black feathers, on the fourth, white wings 
and tail and a black breast, with red under the wings and a 
white belly. The fifth year it was normally colored, and the 
last year it was red below and black above, with white wings 
and tail. 

The " color phases " already mentioned form another class of 
oddities. No one knows the reason, but among certain groups 
of birds it is common or usual for individuals to be some of 
one color, some of another, all their lives. They look lik'e 
entirely different species of birds, and yet scientists agree that 
they are not. This is a very common freak among some of 
the sea-birds, especially the jaegers and the shearwaters, in 
which the light and dark phases are well recognized. In one 
genus of owls, and in one or two of the heron kind, something 
like it occurs. Of two little screech owls from the same nest, 
one will sometimes be gray and the other reddish brown, and 
so far as is known they will keep their color all their lives. 
This phenomenon is sometimes called dichwmatism or double 
coloring. In one of the little bitterns a supposed black di- 
chromatism has been discovered, while in the reddish egret a 
white dichromatism has been known for many years. The 
young of certain herons are white, while the old birds are very 
dark colored ; but this is not called dichromatism. because the 
color depends upon the age of the bird. However, among the 
reddish egrets specimens are frequentl}' seen which are white 
all their life. It is not albinism, because the white is always 
pure white, and the iris is not pink, b\it white. The dark 



118 STBUCTURE AND COMPARISON. 

phase of the bird has a white iris also, and a dark and a light 
bird will frequently mate together. ^ 

These are some of the oddities of the coloring of birds which 
scientific men are now investigating in the hope of discovering 
a reason for them. 



PART 111. 

PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE. 



LITTLE STUDIES IK ZOOLOGICAL THEORY. 

" Science is perfected common sense." — Huxley. 



THE BASIS OF CLASSIFICATION. 

We come now to another kind of science work. We are no 
longer asking : What is this ? or, How does this happen ? but 
Why is this so ? Our eyes will not help us as much now, but if 
we have used them to train our imaginations and have laid up 
a good store of facts, we are ready to begin these more diffi- 
cult but far more interesting studies. 

As you study, you will see more and more that science is 
not purposely dry and hard and uninteresting, but that it is 
an attempt to make study easier by grouping together related 
facts so that you will have fewer of them to remember. A 
scientific arrangement is always the easiest arrangement. A 
great deal of scientific work is only an attempt to sort things 
of a kind in an orderly manner, so that they may be referred 
to with the least time and trouble. 

If a scientist had ten thousand living creatures of all sorts, 
from bees and spiders up to birds and beasts, to arrange and 
name, how would he do it ? 

What would you do if you were given twenty kinds of peas 
and beans mixed together in a basket, and were told to sepa- 
rate each kind without mistakes ? You would not begin by 
sorting them into twenty baskets ; that would give too many 
chances for errors. And you would not put the dwarf peas 
with the dwarf beans, and the tall peas with the pole beans, 
merely because their habits were similar ; nor the white peas 
and beans together, because they were of the same color, for 
you would say that any bean is more like every other bean 
than it is like any pea. 

121 



122 PROBLEMS OF BIHB LIFE, 

First, you would throw all the beans into one dish and all 
the peas into another ; then you would take one of these dishes 
and separate the plain white beans from the spotted ones, and 
finally you would sort out the white bush beans from the 
white limas, and the spotted yellow-eyes from the streaked 
cranberry beans, putting each by itself. You would have 
classified the beans. Then you would classify the peas in the 
same way. To classify means to sort out into kinds. 

Now this is what the scientist would do with his ten thou- 
sand specimens. He would classify them. For convenience 
and exactness he would first divide them into but two classes, 
each of which he would divide again and again into two more 
classes, until at last he had separated each kind out by itself. 
It is never safe to divide into more than two classes at a step 
for fear of making some mistake. 

In his classification the scientist would try to find out the 
plans on which these creatures were made. With the peas 
and beans you very rightly judgei that there was something 
within the seed more important than the shape or color of it, 
and you soon saw that the kidney shape of the bean and the 
globular shape of the pea stood for that difference within 
them — was the index, as we say, of the plan on which each 
was made, while the size and color only served to tell bean 
from bean, and pea from pea. 

In the same way the scientist studies his animals to find 
out the plan on which each is made and the index of that 
plan. He finds two great divisions which are well marked 
by a number of differences, among others by having, or not 
having, bones. It seems to him that bones are the index to 
two distinct kinds of life, so he culls out all the shellfish, 
worms, spiders, insects, and other boneless creatures into 
a group by themselves. Those with bones he puts into 



THE BASIS OF CLASSIFICATION, 123 

another group. The last he calls vertebrate, or backboned 
animals. 

But the vertebrates are not all jjlanned alike. Let us sort 
these into classes as we did the peas and beans : — 

Vertebrates, creatures with a backbone 

I 



Without a skull With a skull 

I. Lancelets I 



Skull imperfect Skull perfect 

II. Lampreys | 



Breathing by gills all their life Not breathing by gills 
III. Fishes all their life 

I 



Having a metamorphosis Not having a meta- 

IV. Batrachians (Frogs, morphosis 

toads, etc.) i 

1 I 

Cold blooded Warm blooded 
V. Reptiles | 

I I 

Always covered Never covered 

with feathers with feathers 

VI. Birds | 

VII. Mammals 

Thus we get seven classes of vertebrates. In some such 
manner as this the scientist would sort out his living crea- 
tures, and then he would test his work to see whether he had 
made any error. He would ask questions about each group, 
and then would make out a little table of answers. Are 
mammals warm or cold blooded ? Do birds liave lungs ? 
How do hshes breathe? How are reptiles clothed? How 
are mammals protected ? His table will look like this : — 



124 



PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE, 



Vertebrate Animals. 



Are they warm or cold 

blooded ? 
Have they a metamorphosis 

(or change of shape) ? 
How do they breathe ? 
Do they lay eggs ? 
How are they covered ? 
What sort of limbs have 

they ? 



Batrachians I Reptiles 



Birds 



Mammals 



By writing an answer to each question and reading the 
columns downward, he will make a definition of each class of 
creatures. Try this yourself and see how well you succeed. 
At least you will find yourself giving definitions very differ- 
ent from those you would have given a few minutes before. I 
suspect that had you been asked what a fish is, you would 
have said, "A fish is a swimming creature/' and you would 
have defined a bird as ^^a creature that flies.'' Then what a 
tangle we should have been in! There are birds that swim 
nearly all the time, and mammals that cannot live out of 
water, reptiles that swim as well as fishes, and fishes that 
come out on dry land. And there are lizards that fly, and 
reptiles that fly, and mammals that fly, not perhaps as well 
as most birds, but much better than some birds, which do not 
fly at all. 

You see now the difference between a scientific definition 
and an unscientific one. The scientific definition refers to one 
thing or class of things and to nothing else. It is accurate. 
You have seen how scientific definitions are made; indeed, 



THE BASTS OF CLASSTFICATIOX, 125 

yon have been told how to make them yourself. You will 
not be troubled in this book with either making or learning 
definitions that are not necessary^ but you have seen that the 
scientist does his work of classifying just as you would do 
yours, that is, in the most accurate way, which in the end is 
the easiest way. 



THE DEGREES m CLASSIFICATION. 

We have discovered that the basis of classification is differ- 
ence in structure. We have arrived at a detinition of a bird 
which enables us to separate all winged, feathered, egg-lay- 
ing, warm-blooded vertebrates into a class by themselves. We 
call them a class because the line is so well marked between 
them and all other living creatures. They form a group by 
themselves as distinct as a class in a school — a collection of 
individuals that do the same work in the same way. 

But each of these classes may be sorted out still farther. 
Let us take the class Birds. What do we notice first ? The 
differences between them. We see that some are simple in 
structure and some are complex, that they are of all degrees 
of simplicity and complexity. So we divide them by their 
rank into orders, just as classes in school are often divided 
into sections according to their scholarship. An order is a 
division by grade. Really an order means a row or line com- 
posed of different objects of the same kind, especially a file 
of soldiers. But we so often compare the lower orders and 
the higher orders that it is perfectly correct to think of them 
as divisions into grades. This grade is decided by men who 
have studied every bone and muscle in the bird and who 
know w^hat each one means. They take no notice of the size 
and color of the bird, but study its structure and decide 
whether it is built on a simple or on a complex plan. 

The orders are divided into families. While it takes a very 
wise man to decide what birds make up an order, it is not 

126 



THE DEGREES IN CLASSIFICATION. 127 

usually very difficult to decide which belong to the same 
family. A family is a division by relationship. The memVjers 
need not be of the same size or color, but they usually have 
the same look or similar habits. Who would not say that 
all the horned owls belonged to one family? They may be 
very unlike in Aze, but they have the family nose and eyes. 

The next division below a family is a genus. A genus com- 
prises those kinds so closely related tha,t we judge they may have 
had a common ancestor. Birds of the same genus are usually 
nearly alike in size and often have some peculiar color pattern 
which makes them look alike, but the surest marks are re- 
semblances in feet, bill, wings, and tail. 

A species is the next and final division. We cannot go any 
farther in our classification. A sp^ecies includes all the birds 
so near alike that they cannot be told ap)art by any permanent 
pecidiarity. Each species has its own marks, colors, and shapes, 
and mates with its own kind, never (except by a rare accident) 
with any other species. 

When we have separated our specimens into species, we 
have found the unit of classification. 



HOW BIRDS AEE NAMED. 

If we were asked to find names for all the many hundreds 
of different species of birds that live in this country, we should 
understand better than we can now how hard it is to invent 
appropriate names. Some we would naturally name from their 
actions, as woodpeckers, creepers, divers, and humming-birds. 
To some we would give good old names that have no meaning 
to us now, but that have come over the ocean with our ancestors, 
as ducks, thrushes, snipe, grebes, and gulls. Some good names 
are suggested by the calls and songs of birds, as whippoorwill, 
bobolink, towhee, phoebe, pewee, and cuckoo. Others are gay- 
colored, and we readily select their color as their most strik- 
ing peculiarity and call them bluebirds, redbirds, yellowbirds, 
or blackbirds. But still there are more birds than names for 
us to give them. 

We see that it is not a simple task to name all the birds of 
a country, much less all those of the world. But the scientist, 
who must first of all be exact in all he does, must have a differ- 
ent name for each bird. So he selects the best of the popular 
names, and by adding descriptive words, as red-headed wood- 
pecker, black-backed gull, ring-necked duck, he makes a com- 
pound name that wilh describe the bird; or he names it from 
the place it lives in, as Californian cuckoo, Carolina chickadee, 
Arizona sparrow. 

There is still a great difficulty. Many times the same name 
is applied to very different birds in various parts of the coun- 
try. What is a partridge ? The New Englander says it is 
the ruffed grouse ; the Virginian says that the ruffed grouse 

128 



HOW BIRDS ARE NAMED. 129 

is a pheasant and the little quail is a 2)artri(lge ; the man from 
the Pacific coast when speaking of pheasants means the beauti- 
ful ring-necked pheasant imported from China. When they 
talk together, they are sure to disagree, because they have in 
mind entirely different birds. With other birds it is even 
worse. A gannet is usually supposed to be a short-legged sea- 
bird that dives from the wing, but in Florida a long-legged 
wading bird, elsewhere known as the wood-ibis, is called a 
gannet. In Louisiana a white egret, a kind of heron, is called 
a grosbeak, but in other places a grosbeak is a small perching 
bird. The water-turkey of Florida is the snake-bird, or 
anhinga, a great web-footed creature, a cousin of the cormo- 
rant ; but w^ith Nevada miners the little water-ousel, a relation 
of the cat-bird, is a ^^water-turkey.'' In Colorado the same 
bird is known as a ^^ water-wren,'' a much better name than 
either of the others. . There is no limit to the number of 
interchanges of name like these. And the situation is not 
improved by some birds having ten, twenty, or even thirty 
names in different parts of the country. 

W^hat is the scientist to do ? He gives the bird a Latin name 
that is to apply to that one bird and to nothing else ; and he 
either translates the Latin naine into English, or selects the 
best-known English name as the standard English name. So 
every bird has at least two names that in the usage of science 
apply to itself and to no other bird. 

Who names the birds ? It used to be that the man who dis- 
covered them gave them both an English and a Latin name ; 
but now the discoverer less often names them himself. Instead, 
he sends the bird to some inan whose whole time is spent in 
studying birds, to determine whether it is really new or not : 
and if this man decides that the bird is something never se^^n 
before, he gives it a name. 



CONCEElSrmG THE BIRD'S LATIN NAME. 

Do not think that Latin names are useless or meaningless. 
Do not think that anything in science is done without a 
reason. We shall neither use Latin names nor talk about 
them after this chapter, because you ought not to get the im- 
pression that learning hard names is studying science ; but in 
this short chapter I wish to tell you why these long names are 
useful. 

In the first place, the hard names in science enable you to 
say exactly what you mean to say. Of course, it is of no 
advantage for you to know the words themselves if you use 
them inaccurately ; but if you know precisely what they mean, 
these scientific terms will make it possible for you to speak 
with so much exactness that you cannot be mistaken. The 
Latin names of birds, like all other scientific terms, have this 
precision, and are ordinarily preferred to the English names, 
which may be indefinite. 

A bird's Latin name is made up in a particular way and has 
a particular significance. The same is true of the Latin name 
of every fish, insect, reptile, or living creature, and also of all 
the botanical names, so that what we are about to say of the 
names of birds holds true of the Latin names of all other 
creatures or plants. 

If you understand Latin and Greek, the name will tell 
you something about the bird. Is not Oceanites. " the sons 
of the ocean," a pretty name for a group of petrels ? Another 
genus of the same birds has a name meaning '' wave dancers," 
which beautifully describes their habits. Take Pinicola enu- 

130 



CONCEBNING THE BIRD'S LATIN NAME, 131 

cleator, the name of the pine grosbeak. It means '^ the bird 
that dwells in the pine woods and shells out nuts/' a name 
which tells us something of the habits of the bird. Some 
names tell us of the color, or the shape, or the home of the 
bird; but all have some appropriate meaning.^ 

The Latin name of every plant and animal is made u^j of 
either two or three words, usually of two. The first always is 
the name of the genus, and the second is the descriptive w^ord 
added to point out the species. So that birds' names are like 
boys' names — a Christian name, like James, and a surname, 
like Brown, together making up the whole name of the bird. 
Only in the case of a bird the surname is placed first, and the 
Christian name after it, as Brown, James, and Brown, John, 
are sometimes written in directories and lists of voters. This ' 
places all the Browns together, and is more convenient for 
ready reference. For the same reason the bird's generic name 
is always written first ; it makes it easier to refer to all the 
birds that are nearly related, and it is also better Latin. 

Let us take the name Dry abates puhescens, the name of the 
downy woodpecker. The first name, which means '' one that 
walks on trees," tells us that it belongs to the genus Dryobates, 
so that we know at once what other birds it most resembles ; 
the second name tells us that it is a soft and downy bird. But 
what are we to think when we meet with Dryohates puhescens 
mediayius, the name of the little downy woodpecker of Xew 
England, our smallest and one of our commonest woodpeckers ? 
Why do some birds have two and some have three names ? 
The third name shows that the bird is a subspecies of Dryo- 
bates pitbescens. But this opens a very puzzling question, 
which we must discuss in another chapter. 

1 Barrinj?, of coarse, the few " uouseuse names'' of some of the earlier 
naturalists. 



A SUBSPECIES. 

You will recollect that we said classification does not go 
below species ; that the species is the unit of classification. 
This is very true. But may we not divide a unit ? A sub- 
species is a fraction of a species} 

We can see by a little illustration what is meant. A red- 
cheeked apple may sometimes be divided so that one half will 
appear to be entirely red and the other entirely green; yet 
when the halves are put together, it is impossible to tell where 
the green fades and the red begins. Taken separately, we 
might suppose they were halves of two different apples, but 
when put together they fit perfectly. It takes both the red 
and the green parts to make a whole apple. 

As we travel from east to west or from north to south, we 
shall often find the birds that we know well singing different 
songs, showing a different shade of color, or we shall see that 
they are larger or smaller than the same bird was in our own 
home. If we were to compare one from the extreme East with 
one from the far South, we should not believe them to be the 
same bird, and yet as we travelled we could nowhere say, ' 
^^ These birds to-day are different from those I saw yester- 
day.'' There were all possible gradations of color and habit, 
like that play of color between the red cheek of the apple and 
its greener side. The change came little by little, as the rosy 
flush grew on the sunny side of the apple. So we cannot say 

"^ These are not given as definitions of species and subspecies, but as con- 
venient descriptions. As definitions they would " beg the question." 

132 



A SUBSPECIES, 133 

that all these birds are not the same species, because there 
is no fixed difference between them. 

But it becomes convenient to have some way of showing 
that there are differences. So we cut the sjjecies up into 
pieces, as it were, just as we did the apjjle. We take the 
whole range of the species and divide the country ujj into as 
many portions as there are peculiar varieties of the species, 
and give to all the birds of the species that live in each section 
a name that tells the scientist just what part of the country 
the bird comes from. Most birds do not have any sub- 
species ; that is, they are alike wherever we find them. Of 
the rest, most do not have more than one subspecies besides 
the original form, one of them being found in the East and 
the other in the West. But some, and they are usually among- 
our best-known birds, have three or four or a half-dozen sub- 
species. The ruffed grouse has four, the downy woodpecker 
five, the hairy woodpecker six, the horned owl five, the 
screech owl nine, the horned lark eleven, and our common 
song sparrow twelve recognized forms. Sometimes a sub- 
species will be found only on a small island far off from land, 
sometimes on a desert, or sometimes confined within other 
narrow limits, but most of them are spread over a large extent 
of country. Because these subspecies are found in different 
parts of the country, they are frequently called "geographical 
races." 

It is often supposed that the birds with two Latin names 
are the only ones of any importance, and that those with 
three names are a mere after-thought of science or nature. 
This is an error. When a species is split up into different 
forms, all the forms composing it are subspecies, and one is no 
more important than another unless it is more abundant. 
When you cut an apple, all the parts are fractions : when you 



134 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE, 

divide a species, all the divisions are subspecies. But out of 
respect for the man who first discovered the bird, it is cus- 
tomary to reserve for the subspecies which he described the 
name that he gave it, so that the form first described always 
holds first place on the list and has but two words in its 
Latin name, while the other races follow usually in the order 
of discovery, with three-word names. It usually happens, 
as the East was settled first, that the Eastern birds were 
described first and stand at the head of the list of divisions 
of species. Sometimes the reverse is the case. The bronzed 
grackle, or Eastern crow blackbird, is a subspecies of the 
Western crow blackbird, because the first crow blackbirds 
described by naturalists, the ^^type specimens,'' as they are 
called, came from the West. Everybody in the East knew the 
bird, but no one had observed that the gloss of his feathers 
had a different tint from that of the Western bird. When 
this was observed, he was marked off as a new subspecies, 
because the old name must be given to the bird first described. 

Perhaps we see now why the Latin name is a help to the 
naturalist, and how it is that the same bird will look and 
act differently in various parts of the country. 

Indeed, it is much easier to see why there should be sub- 
species than to decide to which subspecies a bird belongs. 
But that is the work of the scientist; all that is important 
for us to know is why he separates a species into smaller 
groups, and what a three-word Latin name indicates. 



THE THKEE GREAT PEOBLEMS OF BIED LIFE. 

I WOULD like to have you think of a bird that is not some par- 
ticular kind of a bird, not a sparrow, nor a dove, nor a robin, 
but just a bird. Do not imagine it as either large or small, 
as having any peculiar shape, or any particular color, as a bird 
that lives in some special place or feeds upon a certain kind 
of food ; but such a bird as you might hear calling in the dark 
and know it was a bird, yet know nothing more. I want you 
to thhik just plain bird. 

This is easiest done by imagining that you are a bird your- 
self. 

What is the first thing you would really long for ? AYhat 
is your greatest need ? 

If you were a boy you would say, " Something to eat."' 
Because you are a bird would your wants be so very differ- 
ent ? Men and birds are alike in that both have to spend 
most of their lives hunting for something to satisfy their 
appetites. Food is the first problem. 

What will be your next want ? Warmth, do you say ? It 
is very necessary to keep warm, but with a good coat of 
feathers and two wings, you would fly to a warmer region 
just as naturally as a boy goes into the house when the air 
nips too keenly. You will not be anxious on that score, 
unless some accident befalls you. 

A more important question with the bird is how to keep 
away from his enemies. These hunt him ronstantly while 
he is seeking his necessary food. To get his food without 

136 



136 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE, 

being caught himself is the bird's most important study. 
Shall we not put down Safety as the second problem ? 

The third problem is not so easily hit upon as these last ; 
but we know that though the life of each particular bird is 
shorty it is necessary that the same kinds of birds should 
exist as long as possible. Unless a bird has little ones, that 
kind of bird will die out ; it will become an extinct species. 
Now it is not intended that any bird or plant or living 
creature should become extinct until it has been fairly crowded 
out of existence by some better or stronger kind of plant or 
animal. To prevent this happening by the creature's own 
fault there was implanted in it an instinct almost as strong 
as its desire for food, and stronger than its love of safety, 
which urges it to choose a mate and to spend its time and risk 
its life in rearing a family of little ones. This is the family 
instinct, and this whole problem of the bird's life is called by 
the name of Reproduction. 

Food, Safety, Reproduction, — these are the three great 
interests of a bird's life. We may of course carry the analysis 
one step farther and sa.y that food and safety are the means of 
preserving the bird's own life, and are selfish instincts, while 
reproduction is an unselfish instinct, which gives us two prob- 
lems, self-preservation and self-perpetuation. But for our 
study it is best to stop with the three, food and safety and re- 
production. Of these three the bird must be constantly think- 
ing, and to secure them he must be continually working. 

Now it is a law, both of your life and of every creature's, 
that what he thinks of constantly and works for continually 
has an effect both vipon his body and upon his mind. Often 
we can tell a man's trade and opinions by his look, his walk, or 
his figure. For the same reason what a bird eats, how he 
secures it, how he provides for his safety, and how he brings 



THE THREE QUE AT PROBLEMS OF BlTiTJ LIFE, 137 

up his little ones will have a large effect uxjon his shape^ his 
color, and his habits. If you knew nothing of a bird but 
what he fed on, how he got it, and how he nested, you could 
tell a great deal about his appearance. It was that you might 
better understand what is to follow concerning the changes 
of a bird's structure, color, and habits that are brought about 
by the way he solves these problems of bird life, that I asked 
you to suppose that you were plain birds. 



THE FIRST PROBLEM OF BIRD LIFE. 

FOOD X^T> ITS RELATTOX TO STRUCTURE. 

Here we are, we plain bircls^ and we are hungry. What 
shall we eat ? 

If we were boys, we should say, '^ Whatever we can get easi- 
est, if we like it.'^ Our choice would depend on whether we 
preferred to gratify our appetites or our laziness ; also, though 
all boys appear to have the same powers, on the presence or 
absence of some peculiar accomplishment or intrepidity. The 
skilful fisherman would catch fish, the daring climber might 
climb trees for nuts, and perhaps those without such special 
gifts would pick berries. Though all might prefer the same 
food, some would be so much more active that they would 
secure the whole of it before the others could get any. Rather 
than go hungry the others would take second choice or third 
choice or whatever was left, according to their strength and 
skill. The art of getting your own dinner is to make up your 
bill of fare of what you can get easily and in abundance — 
provided it suits your taste. 

Now if we plain birds must hunt our dinners, we ought, as 
the boys say, ^^to have an eye out for the main chance." We 
have our preferences, no doubt. We also have our fitness or 
unfitness for getting what we prefer. Our '^ main chance " 
lies, first of all, in our swiftness of locomotion, of one sort or 
another. The one that flies better than he walks, covers most 
ground by flying. He will, therefore, be most likely to secure 
a dinner quickly by flying around in search of it. The one 
that swims well, but flies poorly, travels farthest with least 

138 



THE FIRST PROBLEM OF BIRD LIFE. 139 

exertion by swimming, and will find it to his advantage to 
seek his prey in or near the water. The bird with strong legs 
and short wings will cover ground more easily by running than 
by flying, so he will naturally look for his food on the ground. 
Each one would employ his natural advantage or accomplish- 
ment as the easiest way of getting his food. 

Now hunting for something to eat takes up nearly all the 
time of these plain birds, so that the one that is fond of swim- 
ming spends most of his time in the water ; the one that likes 
to run trots about so steadily that he flies very little unless 
frightened or in danger ; while the one that is light and swift 
of wing spends his day in the air. You can guess the result. 
Each one grows more and more adept in his own favorite 
mode of hunting and less and less adapted to following any 
other method. As the swimmer neither flies nor walks much, 
he may at last become incapable of doing either with any ease : 
the penguins that cannot fly and the grebes that cannot walk 
are such birds. The runner may, like the ostrich, become as 
swift of foot as a horse, yet lose his power of flight. The 
strong-winged flying bird may, like the swallow, be tireless on 
the wing and yet scarcely able to walk. Not only do they 
grow unlike in the parts they exercise constantly, but also in 
the parts they neglect to use. The limbs and muscles in con- 
stant use grow large and strong ; those that are disused become 
feeble and pine away, or else stay undeveloped. 

But some one asks if I mean to say that a penguin, an 
ostrich, and a swallow were ever one bird. No, I do not mean 
to say that. But I wished you to notice that if there ever 
was a time — as many believe — when all the birds were just 
plain birds (undifferentiated, a scientist would say\ they could 
not have remained so. They were bound to change, and 
they were bound to grow unlike. 



140 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE, 

For see how it is with men. The blacksmith is not like the 
soldier, nor the bicycler like the tailor. They use different 
sets of muscles, and the men are unlike in size, shape, and 
accomplishments. The blacksmith can bend an iron bar, but 
he could not catch a runner in a race ; and neither he nor the 
runner could make his fingers fly like the slender white fin- 
gers of the musician. If blacksmiths' sons were always black- 
smiths and musicians' children musical, we might expect much 
more remarkable differences. 

In like manner, a bird's work changes its shape and struc- 
ture ; eating one kind of food, using one form of exercise, the 
bird, like the man, grows better and better fitted to follow his 
own trade and more unfitted to take up any other. We say 
he becomes adaj^ted to his kind of life, and that his structure 
is modified (that is, changed) by his search for food. 

This is the first problem of bird life — to find food. This is 
the principle, — The search for food results in modifications of 
structure. Take this principle and see how it will explain the 
shape of many kinds of birds that you see. Why is the swal- 
low so swift and light of wing ? He hunts little dancing, flit- 
ting flies. Why is the humming-bird so slender-billed and 
quick-winged ? He seeks his insects out of the long tubes of 
flowers as he poises buzzing before the blossoms. Why is the 
yellow warbler so trim and dainty ? He, too, eats insects, 
but such as he finds in his pathway as he trips along the 
branches, and so he needs neither strong wings nor long prob- 
ing bill. All three feed on insects, but they find them in 
different places and hunt for them in different ways. The 
way they find their food — not the kind of food itself — 
decides what the structure of the bird will be. 

You may be able to discover for yourselves why the heron, 
the loon, and the sea gull, which all live on fish, are yet so 



THE FIRST PROBLEM OF BIRD LIFE, 141 

very different from each other. Find out the places each pre- 
fers to live in and how he hunts his food, then see if these 
facts will not explain why the heron's neck and beak and legs 
are so long, why the gull's wings are so strong, and why the 
loon, though it cannot walk much nor fly easily, is a better 
fisherman than either of the others. 



THE SECOND PROBLEM OF BIED LIFE. 

SAFETY AND ITS RELATION TO COLOR. 

From plain birds structurally alike we have become trans- 
formed into birds of very different shapes, — long-billed and 
short-billed, long-legged and short-legged, large and small. 
Let us learn how the second problem of bird life, that of 
providing for our own safety, affects us. 

We have enemies. Other creatures, which like ourselves 
have their first problem to solve, are trying to kill us for food. 
Some fishes will swallow us greedily when we are swdmming ; 
other birds have learned to prey on their own kind and hover 
in air ready to swoop down upon us; snakes creep up to 
our nests and devour us ; even large spiders will occasionally 
terrify and capture the tiniest of us ; but most numerous and 
most destructive are the quadrupeds of prey that hunt us 
incessantly and with great success. How are we to get our 
necessary food while exposed to these persecutions ? 

Our greatest security would come not from weapons but 
from some means of escaping observation. In the days when 
men fought the Indians, how did they avoid being seen? 
Partly by silent, secret habits, and partly by their suits of 
homespun and dull colors which blended with their surround- 
ings. The British soldier with his scarlet coat was a mark 
that could be seen far off, and the straps crossing on his breast 
gave the Revolutionary marksman a sure guide to his heart. 
Many a British soldier fell because his uniform prevented 
any concealment. The modern khaki, which has been adopted 

142 



THE SECONI) PROBLEM OE BIRD LIFE. 143 

instead, offers protection to the soldiers because it is not 
easily distinguished from its surroundings. 

But how are we birds that cannot change our coats to 
take advantage of such means of concealment? Let us take 
a broad view of the subject. If we were to fly far above 
the earth, it would appear to us, I fancy, very much like 
those colored plates of hemispheres and continents in our 
geographies. So, indeed, it appears looking down from a 
mountain top. All the country round is spread out before 
us like a painted card. The sandy stretches shine white in 
the sunlight; the less barren, but still infertile, spots show 
buff or brown ; ploughed lands appear in squares of all 
colors, from yellow to black, according to the soil; and 
meadows, grain fields, gardens, and forests are each green 
after its own kind. If our view could be extended to in- 
clude a whole hemisphere, we should still find it marked off 
in fields not less vivid in color than these laid out by men, 
but less regular in outline. We should see the deserts sparkle 
with sand, the plains lying bare and buff with clay beds, the 
river courses and watered countries spread out in green cham- 
paigns, the mountain chains standing like rows of crystals 
and striped like tourmalines from their green bases to their 
white and icy summits. And the whole glowing picture 
would shade away from the luxuriant and almost sombre 
vegetation of the green tropics to the wind-cropped mosses 
of the brown and barren north. 

What colors would best befit a bird of the tropics ? or a 
bird of the deserts ? or a bird of the arctic north ? Greens 
for one, dusty browns or tawny for the next, and brown or 
white for the last. As a matter of fact we find this actually 
true. The birds of the tropics wear the gayest of coats, and 
have among them a large proportion of birds wholly or partly 



144 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE 

green. Birds of temperate regions are rarely gay in color, 
most of them being of soft browns or grays or blues or dull 
olive shades. Many of the most northern land-birds and 
mammals undergo a remarkable seasonal change, so that 
they are brown in summer to match the heaths about them 
and white in winter like the driven snow. Indeed, among the 
few birds that you know yourself, do you not find sparrows 
most commonly on the open fields and dusty roadsides, while 
the greenish vireos and flycatchers, and the bright orioles and 
tanagers, stay among the tree-tops and the blossoms ? It is a 
hint of what ISTature is doing on a large scale the world over. 
Unless there is some good reason for another color, we shall 
find the bird harmonizing with the prevailing surface color of 
the region he inhabits, or with the light and shade of his 
favorite haunts. 

But the very first birds that ever were, plain birds, such as 
we imagined ourselves to be, must have been either of one 
tint, or of we do not know what shades and mixtures. How 
can we explain the change from this unknown primitive color 
to the kaleidoscopic colors of birds to-day ? Could we plain 
birds change our colors as we changed our shapes ? 

Yes, we could change our colors, not as a man does his coat 
(except in the seasonal moult, which is another problem), but 
just as we changed our shape. Let us go back to our analogy 
of boys and birds. If we were boys, could we not change our 
color? Does your mother never say after a summer at the 
seashore : " How your hair has faded ! How tanned and sun- 
burned you are ! " And, after a long illness, your visitors 
notice how pale you have grown. These are instances of boys 
changing their color. Wind, sun, and rain — in other words, 
climate — will alter a man's complexion very much. In time 
it will change a whole nation's so that a certain complexion 



THE SECOND PROBLEM OF BIRD LIFE. 145 

becomes national, as the olive skin and dark hair of the 
Italian, and the fair hair and white skin of the Scandinavian. 

If climate can alter a man\s color, why should it not affect 
the birds' ? It does. The snns of the desert bleach them ; 
the humidity of wet and dripping forests removes the brighter 
hues and leaves dull blues and grays and browns predominant ; 
and tropical warmth and brightness seem to tone up the colors 
by some secret chemistry of the sun. It is not so much that 
birds choose regions that correspond to them in tone, as that 
they are changed to harmonize with the surroundings they 
prefer to live in. The object of safety is not so vividly before 
the bird that he would leave his favorite food because his coat 
did not match the scenery ; but natural causes work upon him 
against his will to secure for him what he would not seek for' 
himself. 

The result here is safety. The principle is, — Animals 
iiivolunLarily tend to acquire a color that accords with their usual 
habitat ; or, in simpler words, they become like the color of 
the places they live in. 

We have touched the secret spring of a great truth in this 
principle, and now that the door is open before us we have no 
time to go farther. We cannot fully appreciate how well this 
principle explains many difficulties until we know more ; 
until we ha.ve seen how the gayest bird even may be pro- 
tected by his brilliancy and the plainest favored by his shad- 
ings ; how certain patterns of coloration resemble inanimate 
things, and how, unless a bird is favored by its color or by its 
sense, it is likely to have a short life. But we have learned 
that even if in the beginning all birds had been of one color, 
they could not always have remained alike, and that there is 
saf^y in a color that blends with the surroundings. 



THE THIED PROBLEM OF BIED LIFE. 

REPRODUCTION AXD ITS EFFECT UPOX HABITS. 

The search for food and for safety has resulted in making 
our plain birds over inside and outside. They are transformed 
in structure and in color. What is there left to be done by 
this third problem ? 

The care of a bird's young is in a great measure a repetition 
of its care for itself. They must be fed and protected. Of 
course it makes no difference whether the food sought is to be 
eaten by the bird itself or to be given to its young ones; 
whether the color-change merely protects the old bird's life 
or her own and her nestlings'. To a very great degree the 
cares and labors of reproduction must produce the same effects 
as the other two great demands of the bird's life. But does it 
do nothing else ? Is an instinct as resistless as that of hun- 
ger, requiring the bird's closest attention several months in 
the year, to have no effect of its own ? No other of the bird's 
labors is so absorbing, so exacting, so unceasing, as the care of 
its young. It demands the bird's greatest energy, it taxes to 
the utmost her courage, discretion, and forethought; all her 
mind is occupied with building the nest, and afterward with 
feeding and defending the helpless young. Shall this leave 
no mark that can be seen ? 

Here we find the principal effect of reproduction — what we 
call its specific effect^ because it seems to belong to this prob- 
lem more than to any of the others. The specific effect of 
the first problem was a change of structure ; the specific effect 

146 



THE THIRD PROBLEM OF BJBT) LIFE, 147 

of the second problem was a change of color ; the specific effect 
of reproduction is an improvement in the bir(Vs intelligence. It 
is not that the other problems do not also have a similar 
effect. Many a shrewd trick has the bird for hiding himself, 
and many an inventive turn helps him in getting his food; 
but food and safety can usually be secured without any great 
tax upon his brain. It is working for a half-dozen helpless, 
ignorant, fearless, stupid little nestlings that makes the bird 
shrewd and ready. 

We seldom see birds do anything remarkable except at 
their nesting season, or on their breeding grounds. We can- 
not be said to know a bird's character unless we have met 
him in his summer home, with his family. There he usually 
has a peculiar song, and often a different dress and habits 
than are seen elsewhere ; sometimes he appears to be an 
entirely different bird. Who would suspect that our ISTorth- 
ern dandy, the bobolink, with his harmless rollicking ways, 
gay suit, and glorious song, was the same bird as the dull- 
colored, songless, mischievous rice-bird of the South? You 
will notice, too, that the stupid birds are as a rule the least 
affectionate. There is a very close relation between love and 
intelligence. Nothing makes a man or a bird so quick to 
learn and to invent as having to do for some one he loves. 
We must admit that affection is one of the greatest possible 
spurs to improvement. It seems to have done more than 
anything else to develop the mind and character of the 
bird. 

We cannot study changes of this sort as we can color and 
structure. Those can be touched, seen, judged by the senses ; 
but mental changes can be judged only by their effect upon 
the actions of the bird. We see them in the habits of the 
bird. Habits are ivaj/s of doing things. There are habits of 



148 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE, 

perching, habits of swimming, habits of hunting, and habits 
of eating, but the most remarkable habits of the bird are 
those in some way connected with reproduction. 

What would have been the effects of reproduction on us 
plain birds is a question no man can answer. We cannot 
reason from the resemblances between birds and men in 
answ^ering that, for we do not know that the minds of both 
are as near alike as their bodies are. But if we study birds, 
we shall find among them two very remarkable habits which 
no other creatures have so universally or in such perfection. 
And they are habits which students tell us are due to this 
instinct of reproduction. Nearly all birds make nests, and 
nearly all that live in temperate and polar regions migrate, 
or move to warmer winter homes, returning in the spring to 
their breeding grounds. Migration and nest-building are im- 
portant habits J arising from the instinct of reproduction. 

Structure and color are the two points about a bird that w^e 
notice first, but his habits are just as interesting, and have a 
meaning. They tell us about the bird's intellect and char- 
acter, and by studying them, we may know how well educated 
the bird is. Are you disappointed that the other problems 
produced such great results, while this seems to give us so 
little change ? When we study migration and the other 
changes of habits, we shall find them not less remarkable 
than the thousand shapes and myriad colorings of the bird. 



PKOTECTION BY COLOR. 

The problem of safety, as we learned some time ago, put a 
premium upon a bird whose color helped him to pass unob- 
served. It was a very pretty theory, but we are to see how it 
works in practice. When we think of the red and blue and 
yellow birds we know, it seems hard to realize that they are 
included in any such design; when we think of the odd- 
colored ornaments that birds wear, bands, crescents, stripes, 
and patches, often of the most brilliant hues, we fail to under- 
stand why such markings are not a sure clew^ to discovery; 
when we recollect how unlike the different sexes of the same 
bird often are, and how frequently young birds are very dis- 
similar to their parents both in colors and markings, we must 
think that it is a poor law that does not apply to all the birds 
of one species, but explains the plumage of one age or sex, and 
leaves the others still unaccounted for. 

We cannot go into all the details of this subject, — even 
men of science are agreed to dispute about them, — but we can 
at least notice among the birds of our acquaintance instances 
where their color helps to conceal them from our eyes. If all 
our sparrows, for example, had blue or red backs, how much 
more readily we should discover them ; for sparrows have a 
way of staying near the ground, either directly upon it, or in 
low bushes, or about fences, where a briglit-colored back and 
breast would serve to distinguish them instantly. Xow most 
of our common sparrows, we find, are dull-colored little birds 
varied with stripes about the back, breast, and head that seem 

149 



150 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE. 

to blend with the colors of the earth and with the grass steins 
they live among. 

But the sparrows have cousins, like the grosbeaks, cardi- 
nals, and buntings, that are among our gayest birds, brill- 
iant in red, blue, yellow, and striking combinations. Are 
these ground-birds ? Not at all, they swing and sing among 
the tree-tops where there are green leaves about them and 
blue sky for a background, and the keen edge of their own 
color is, as it were, taken off. I have often thought, seeing an 
indigo bird swinging on the top of a balsam fir, that he was 
just the proper weather-vane for such a tree, his rich blue coat 
with peacocky hints of green seeming to stand exactly between 
the clear blue of the sky and blue green of the fir tree. And 
in the case of so brilliant a bird as the male scarlet tanager, the 
brightest color possible, unrelieved by any shading, there seems 
to be an advantage taken of the law of complement al colors 
which makes you see scarlet after gazing too steadily at green, 
or green by looking too intently upon scarlet. He cannot be 
hidden, and yet you do not see him among the leaves much 
more quickly than you would a duller-colored bird. 

Another thing that has struck me is that the brightest- 
colored birds are found most often near civilization. You do 
not find the orioles and grosbeaks and tanagers so abundant 
away from farms and gardens. Why this is so I cannot tell 
you now ; all we wish to infer from it is that their colors evi- 
dently do not expose them to so much danger that they avoid 
men ; in some way they either blend with their surroundings 
or are able to take care of themselves in spite of their brilliant 
plumage. They are the birds that most of all plunge into the 
midst of blossoms and frolic in the snowy drifts of apple and 
cherry blooms. 

Another family of our gayest birds, the warblers, are quite 



PROTECTION BY COLOR. 151 

commonly tricked out with yellow and green. In watching 
them, I have sometimes noticed how much yellow there is in 
the green of foliage, how they accord with leaves just opening 
or with leaves just fading. This is scarcely color protection, 
but it is color harmony, which is much the same thing. 

The dull-mottled coloring of the owls, we may suppose, has 
less to do with their hunting by night than with their lying 
still by day, when in shape and color they often much resemble 
dead and broken branches such as abound in a forest. An owl 
alighting on the top of a dead stub will seem to be a jjart of it, 
he sits so stiff and shapeless, and looks so square-headed. 
Nearly all the sandpipers, snipe, and other shore-birds are 
streaked or dotted upon the back with brown and buffy like 
the light grass stems and the dark background behind them, a 
coloring which often protects the sandpiper, especially the 
mother bird upon the nest, from observation. But the plovers, 
which are nearly related to the sandpipers, have plain-colored 
backs, so that they come under a different protective device. 
They are less spotted than the sandpipers, and often have dark 
bands, bars, or marks about the breast and head that may 
help to efface the outline. 

When you have opportunity, notice how much the backs of 
nighthawks and whippoorwills look like some of the dark- 
spotted, night-flying moths that lie still by day under brown 
leaves and upon tree trunks. In the same way, these birds 
that hunt during the hours of dark and twilight, and crouch 
upon the ground or upon the branch of a tree during the day, 
closely resemble the surface they alight on. The back of the 
woodcock is quite similarly mottled. The back and sides of 
grouse and quail are also protectively colored. 

The outline of a bird is often more readily recognized than 
a spot of color would be; we see the familiar line, and infer 



152 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE, 

that it belongs to a bird, therefore many of the bird's orna- 
ments are a protection against discovery. "This makes, for 
instance, the mallard's dark green head tend to detach itself 
from his body and to join the dark green of the shady ledge, 
or the ruby of the humming-bird to desert him and to appear 
to belong to the glistening flower he is searching.'' In this 
way, bright or strongly contrasting crown patches, throat 
patches, necklaces, and collars may be seen to have a use other 
than mere ornament, and crests often help to conceal birds by 
disguising familiar outlines. The cedar bird and the ruffed 
grouse are experts in evading notice by throwing themselves 
into strange attitudes and erecting their crests. Curves are 
what betray the bird; broken outlines or stiff' lines conceal 
him. Therefore the ruffed grouse, when in a tree, lays all his 
feathers flat, stands stiffly at his greatest height, with his neck 
stretched as far as he can reach or crooked sharply at an angle. 
I have stood within two rods of a ruffed grouse, in fair sight, 
and that not many years since, and have decided that he was 
a very strange branch on a willow bush, before it flashed 
upon me what I was looking at. 

The most beautiful arrangement for protective color is also 
the commonest, and though nearly every bird and animal prof- 
its by it, no man ever discovered it until a few years ago. It is 
called the " law of gradationJ^ Nearly every bird, you know, 
is lighter on the breast than on the back, and it is almost a rule 
that birds not uniformly colored, like the crow and the black- 
birds, shall be white or gray or buffy along the belly and beneath 
the tail, even if they have dark breasts and throats. Why this 
is so, is as simple as it is interesting. 

Every bird, standing in his usual positions, cuts off a portion 
of the light that falls from above and so casts a shadow on 
his own breast and under surface. We do not see the shadow, 



PROTECTION BY COLOIL 153 

we do not know of its existence, but it is there. If the bird's 
breast were the same color as his back, the shadow, mak- 
ing it appear darker than it is (that is, darker than the back;, 
would bring out the line of the breast sharply against the 
background. The shadow on a light breast cancels the effect 
of light upon a dark back and causes the outline to blend with 
the background. 

Nothing could be simpler than the experiment by which 
Mr. Abbott H. Thayer, the artist who painted the ^' Madonna 
Enthroned '' and other well-known pictures, proved his discovery 
of this '' law of gradation '' to a large number of scientists. Any 
child can perform the experiment with very little trouble. We 
quote from the original report of the experiment : " Mr. Thayer 
placed three sweet potatoes, or objects of corresponding shape 
and size, horizontally on a wire a few inches above the ground. 
They were covered with some sticky material, and dry earth 
from the road on which they stood was sprinkled over them so 
that they would be of the same color as the background. The 
two end ones were then painted white on the under side, and 
the white color was shaded up and gradually mixed with the 
brown of the sides. When viewed from a little distance these 
two end ones, which were white below, disappeared from sight. 
while the middle one stood out in strong relief and appeared 
much darker than it really was. Mr. Thayer explained that 
terrestrial birds and mammals which are protectingly colored 
have the under parts white or very light in color, and that tJie 
color of the under parts usually shades gradually into that of 
the upper parts. This is essential in order to counteract the 
effect of the shadow, which otherwise, as shown by the middle 
potato, makes the object abnorjnally conspicuous and causes it 
to appear much darker than it really is. Some of the wit- 
nesses could hardly believe that the striking difference in the 



154 PBOBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE, 

visibility of the three potatoes was entirely due to the coloring 
of the under side, and Mr. Thayer was asked to color the middle 
one like the two others in order that the effect might be 
observed. Mr. Thayer complied- with the request, painting 
the under side of the middle potato w^hite, and shading the 
white up into the sides as in the case of the others. The effect 
was almost magical. The middle potato at once disappeared 
from view. A similar experiment was tried on the lawn. Two 
potatoes were painted green to resemble the green of the grass 
above Avhich they were suspended. One was painted white on 
the under side and at once became invisible when viewed from 
a little distance, while the other showed plainly and seemed 
very dark, the shadow, superadded to the green of the under 
side, making it remarkably conspicuous. The experiments 
were an overwhelming success." 

Try this experiment yourself and then notice how almost 
invariable is this law of gradation by which Nature helps the 
birds and beasts to escape detection, however gayly they are 
colored. 



ZOOGEOGRAPHY. 

When you look in your geographies and see the continents 
all marked out into countries and states, you forget that any^ 
thing except men inhabits those lands. How would you like 
to see a bird geography of those regions ? Or what would you 
say to an animal or a plant geography, showing where each 
kind of animal and plant was to be found ? There are such 
maps, and if you were to see a book full of them, with all sorts 
of plants and insects and birds and mammals claiming the 
country you are living in, you would feel as if you had been 
crowded out yourself. Yet as a matter of fact we all live on 
the same territory very comfortably. Did you ever have a 
dish full of apples and then fill the spaces between the 
apples with hazel nuts, and shake rice kernels down the 
crevices between the nuts and the apples, and grains of 
sugar through the whole ? There were as many apples in 
the dish as if there had been no nuts, rice, or sugar, were 
there not ? These smaller articles merely filled in the waste 
room. So it is with the animals on the globe. Innumerable 
creatures may live on the same ground if they do not get in each 
other's way, and each one can and does have a geography all 
its own without interfering with the states and territories laid 
out by men. The geography of any kind of plant or animal is 
called its distribution, and it tells us where that species lives. 

If we had the maps of the distribution of all kinds of plants 
and animals, eacli with its own home marked in a briglit color, 
and all the rest of the map blank, we shoukl be surprised to 
see that the maps could be sorted out into a few patterns so 

155 



156 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE. 

near alike as to be very remarkable. For instance, one kind 
of bird would be found in northern Maine and New Hampshire, 
in the Adirondack Mountains, in the Catskills and down along 
the Alleghany chain even as far south as the CarolinaSj but 
nowhere else in the United States except perhaps in northern 
Michigan and Minnesota. Then another bird, entirely unlike 
the first, would be found in the same places and in no others. 
Then a third and a fourth and many more, until it dawned 
upon you that you had discovered a bird state. Then you would 
find other birds visiting southern Florida, but never getting 
north of a line drawn from Tampa Bay to Cape Malabar ; and 
others still that were found only in a little point of land at the 
very southern part of Texas ; some that lived on the Great 
Plains only, and some that were found in the Great Basin, 
and others that followed mountain ranges, and though they 
travelled south the whole width of the United States, never 
strayed more than a few miles east or west. These limits 
would mark the bounds of other bird states, which we could 
increase until the whole continent was divided among them. 

The curious point would be the fantastic shape of these 
bird states. Why shotild Arctic birds be found along a nar- 
row strip leading far down into Mexico ? Why should birds 
of the warm Mississippi Valley push up into the cold North 
as far as the Saskatchewan and Athabaska rivers ? Why 
should the different kinds all agree to make the same skips 
and jumps ? 

The men who study the geography of animals and draw 
maps of their states undertake to explain these puzzles. 
They say that there is a reason for the shape of these bird 
and animal states, and they call the whole study zoogeography, 
or the geography of animals ; or, when speaking of a single 
species or of a few species, they talk of their distribution. 



DISTRIBUTION. 

There are two questions to be answered in studying the 
distribution of plants and animals : What in the past caused 
them to be so scattered, and what in the present holds them 
where they are ? 

The first could not be determined without the help of 
the geologist, but the second flows naturally out of what we 
have been studying. 

Birds are like people. Some need and enjoy much greater 
heat than most others, and some few cannot live in regions even 
moderately warm, but all of them desire and seek a place just 
warm enough for their own constitutions. Furthermore, no 
bird, however hardy he may be, can exist where his food will 
be destroyed by cold or will be buried under snow and ice for 
many months in the year. So choice and necessity, acting 
together, drive the birds back and forth as the cold and the 
food supply increase and diminish. For many months in 
the year the bird is homeless, but as it comes summer he 
always seeks some spot that promises just the right degree 
of warmth and food enough for himself and family. The 
breeding grounds are always reckoned as the home of the 
bird, and maps showing distribution are supposed to show 
us where the birds are found in the height of summer. 

Why is it then that birds whose natural home is in the 
North leave behind them such lagging rear columns in lands 
of sunshine and almost tropical heat ? Why are the three- 
toed woodpeckers, which are found elsewhere only in the 
most northern of the Northern states, found also in a narrow, 

157 



158 PBOBLKMS OF BTRD LIFE. 

southward streamer that straggles south almost to Mexico ? 
Why is the red-breasted nuthatch never seen in summer south 
of the northern tier of states except along a narrow line in the 
East and another in the West reaching hundred of miles south 
of his natural home ? In answering these questions we shall 
show that distribution is principally a matter of temperature, 
or of temperature and moisture, which is climate. 

Did you ever notice in your geographies (but not all geog- 
raphies have them) little, fine, brown lines that wave about 
over the map like a filmy cobweb, now looping downward, 
now hooping up, but in general travelling east and west? 
They are called isothermal lines, — that is, lines of equal heat, 
— because all the places through which they pass have the 
same average temperature. There are also isotherms for 
every month in the year passing through all the places that 
have the same heat in summer and the same degree of cold in 
winter, but these are not put down on our maps. 

In a general way, we were aware that it is warm in the 
South, and that it grows colder as we go north, but perhaps 
it is new to us that the change is not uniform ; in other words, 
that the isotherms do not run straight across the map parallel 
with the degrees of latitude. It is much more interesting as 
it is. The isothermal lines now tell us considerable about 
the country they cross, so that if all the lakes, rivers, and 
mountains were removed from the map and only these lines of 
average temperature left, we* still might know something of 
the surface of the country, while a map of the summer iso- 
therms would tell us a great deal. 

When an isotherm takes a northward bend, we know that 
the heat is greater inside the loop than it is outside it. 
Usually we find within the loop either a flat plain that re- 
flects the heat, or a lower level of land along some river 



DI;S' TRIE ZTTION. 1 69 

valley. Isotherms travel around the upper edge of such 
places. But they travel around the lower edge of a mountain 
chain. A decided bend to the southward, therefore, means 
that a chain of mountains bars the line of equal heat, which 
is deflected, or turned out of its course, by the obstruction. 
Near the seacoast the isotherm may turn either up or down. 
A warm ocean current with warm, moist winds will turn the 
isotherm upward, as on the Pacific coast; the outswinging of 
the Gulf Stream from the Gulf of Maine turns the isotherm 
downward and gives the cool summers of the New England 
coast. The temperature line may be thought of as like a tiny 
cobweb attached at both ends and driven up and down by 
warm winds or cold, or turned out of its course by obstructions 
that would cause a change of temperature. Thus it may be 
that a place far to the north and one far to the south may 
have the same climate, one isotherm passing through both. 
But it is not only winds, currents, and distance north 
that make temperature. There must be^some reason why a 
mountain chain will deflect the isotherm. Why is it? We 
know very well that the top of a mountain is cooler than tlie 
valleys about it, not only because it feels every breeze, but 
because it is higher. We can see that it is cooler than the 
country round about, for the snow lies upon its top long 
after it has disappeared from the valleys, and the higher 
the mountain the longer the snow lingers. Thus we infer 
that temperature decreases imtli elevation. Places of the same 
latitude and having the same level above the sea. if there 
were no disturbing influences, would have the same climate. 
There would be one climate at sea-level, another at two 
thousand feet above, another at five thousand, and so on. 
every few hundred feet showing more or less differenct' in 
climate. In a sin^ie lone aud U)t'tv uunnitain wo shinild tiud 



160 PROBLEMS OF BIBT) LIFE, 

zones or belts around it all the way up to the top, each 
inhabited by slightly different trees, insects, birds, and mam- 
mals, until we reached the summit of perpetual ice, barren 
of life and vegetation. 

We may regard the earth itself as such a mountain, its 
ice-capped pole the summit, surrounded by zone below zone 
of vegetation each more luxuriant than the one above it 
until we reach the equator, or base of our world mountain. 
There is a curious similarity between the belts on a moun- 
tain and the zones of the earth. Very often on the hills 
and mountains of New England I have picked the spicy 
mountain cranberry, the goosefoot potentilla with its starry 
flowers, or the scrubby little Corema, and have recognized the 
land I was on as like the coast of Labrador ; it was as if 
I had travelled north five hundred miles instead of climbing 
up half a mile. Still more remarkable is the case of higher 
mountains farther to the south. On San Francisco Mountain 
in Arizona, which rises 12,800 feet above the sea, have been 
found Arctic plants identical with those of the extreme North. ^ 
Nine species found on this mountain have proved to be pre- 
cisely similar to those brought by General Greely from Lady 
Franklin Bay, latitude eighty-two degrees north. By climb- 
ing a mountain two miles and a half in height, we would be 
able to see plants growing for which we must go more than 
three thousand miles if we journeyed due north. Thus the 
tops of high mountains give us an arctic climate. 

Now we see why it is that northern birds are sometimes 
found far to the south. They follow down the mountain 
peaks and find at different elevations the zone which gives 
them the climate they would naturally seek in the north. 
Or if they have wintered south and would return in summer 
1 Davis, Elementary Meteorology, p. 343. 



DISTRIB UTION. 161 

to a cooler climate, instead of travelling hundreds of miles 
north, they go up into the mountains a mile or two and find 
just the degree of coolness they desire. So the three-toed 
woodpecker and the arctic ptarmigan, the leucostictes and the 
snow buntings, drift southward along the lines of lofty jjeaks 
in the Western ranges, and in the East the red-breasted nut- 
hatch, the chickadee, and the junco follow down the Appa- 
lachian system, finding a climate that is in m_ost respects 
the same as their Canadian home. 

In the northward extension of southern birds, we find that 
they follow plains and river valleys. The flat, barren plains 
reflect the heat, and the winds across them are often burning 
hot, withering all vegetation like a fire. Such w4nds and 
such heat bear the lines of summer temperature far to the 
north, even to the plains of the Saskatchewan and the interior 
of British America. Here the birds find a summer as hot as 
that upon the seacoast fifteen or twenty degrees farther north. 
It does not matter that in winter these same plains are many 
times colder than the seacoast, for the bird's distribution is 
influenced by the summer climate. 

The map of faunal provinces and subprovinces shows us 
very nearly the course of the summer isotherms marking 
each ten or fifteen degrees difference in average heat. The 
north and south division through the centre of the map is, 
however, not a temperatui'e division^ but it cuts off the dry 
western half from the moist eastern half of the countrv — the 
green and luxuriant prairies and woodlands from the parched 
and scanty herbage of the plains. And, of course, with the 
change in amount of rainfall and the consequent change 
in vegetation, follow changes in the insect life and in the 
birds that live upon insects and berries. There is often a 
very close connection between birds and certain plants or 

M 



162 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE. 

trees. AYho would expect to find a sage cock away from 
sage brush ? or a spruce partridge (Canada grouse) outside of 
the spruce forests ? It may not be chance alone that makes 
the pine warbler haunt the pitch-pine country, and the blue 
yellow-backed warbler always seek the neighborhood of the 
hanging usnea, or swamp-moss. All these are facts of distri- 
bution, and it is part of the good naturalist's work to observe 
whether certain birds and plants always are found together. 

The study of distribution needs long training and wide 
observation to be of any great worth, but a beginner may do 
several things that will have a scientific value. One of the 
simplest is to make a list of all the birds found within certain 
limits ; another is to notice carefully the kind of locations 
preferred by each bird, whether open hard-wood, soft-wood, 
thickets, brook-sides, meadows, and the like ; while a third is 
to explore carefully some hill or mountain near home, with 
the aid of a map, marking every hundred feet in elevation, 
and to note carefully the elevations at which every kind of bird 
and flower is seen, together with the slope of the hill, north, 
east, south, or west, on which they are seen. By such explora- 
tions, year after year, over any mountain, noting its zones and 
the trees, plants, birds, and insects, the exposure to sun, the 
amount of rain received, the character of the rock beneath, and 
always the elevation, a patient observer could accomplish 
much. But studies of this kind require more time and pains- 
taking observation than most amateur naturalists are able to 
spend. 



MIGEATION. 

Besides this regular distribution in summer over certain 
well-marked areas, most birds have another winter home far- 
ther south, and in going from one to the other they make 
long flights called migrations, or movings. The causes of this 
remarkable custom are so remote that, without the aid of the 
geologist, we can hardly understand how the habit was ac- 
quired, nor why, when once the birds are driven south by 
cold, they do not stay there. But simpler questions than 
these, questions which might not seem too hard for ourselves 
to answer, as, in what manner they travel these great distances ; 
how they find their way back to the same place, to the same 
porch or bush, after a thousand miles of wanderings ; why 
we so seldom see them going, but only wake up to find them 
come or gone — -these apparently easy questions have, until 
recently, been a standing puzzle to the world. Many foolish 
guesses have been made, wide of the mark, but at last, by 
patient study, the facts have been discovered; and now all 
seems so simple, so much like what we would do ourselves, 
that we wonder at our not knowing it years ago. 

In the first place, it was settled that most of the smaller 
birds flew by night, which sufficiently explained why we 
neither saw them come, nor saw them leave. One moonlight 
night in September, a number of years ago, I was awakened 
from a very bad dream of burglars by hearing in my room a 
noise that could not be explained as cat, rat, bat, or mouse. 
The windows Were open, and there was out of doors the dying 
glimmer of a setting moon, but the room was daa-k; nothing 

16;] 



164 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE. 

could be seen, yet the noise continued. Lighting the gas, I 
found a poor little bird bumping his head against the ceiling, in 
frantic efforts to escape. He was easily caught, and proved to 
be a young yellow-runiped warbler, much frightened, but unhurt 
except from a temporary baldness where he had rubbed his 
head against the ceiling. Evidently he had been flying by 
moonlight, and the chances were that he was not going alone 
on this unknown journey, but that all his tribe were on their 
fall migration. But I could not see the passing armies, and 
when I looked out in the morning the little warblers flitting 
about in the shrubbery were apparently the same that had been 
there for days. 

It is not often that one really has an opportunity to see the 
flood sweep past ; and, because it is, perhaps, the most vivid 
story ever written of the way a great army of birds makes 
its marches, I am going to quote to you the account written 
by Mr. William Brewster of his studies of the migration of 
birds at Point Lepreaux lighthouse, near the Bay of Fundy. 
Of the experience of one stormy night he gives the following 
description : — 

" A clear, cool day ; the evening perfectly clear up to ten 
o'clock, when a heavy curtain of clouds rolled overhead from 
the northwest, and it became very dark. An hour later dense 
fog set in, and at midnight it began to rain, heavy showers 
succeeding one another at frequent intervals. Wind south; 
paff'y, at times strong. 

"As soon as the sky became overcast small birds began to 
come about the light. Their numbers increased steadily from 
ten to eleven o'clock, but during this time the majority kept 
at a safe distance, and only two or three struck. With the 
advent of the fog they multiplied tenfold in the course of a 
few minutes. For the next hour from fifty to one hundred 



MIGBATION. 165 

were constantly in sight, and from one to eight or ten dashing 
at the lantern. ... I remained on the lighthouse from ten 
o'clock until two the next morning. During this time fully 
two hundred birds came against the lantern. Of these at least 
lifty were killed or disabled, and I caught and examined jjrob- 
ably fifty more which were too wet or exhausted to fly after 
dropping on the platform. 

'^ At the height of the melee the scene was interesting and 
impressive beyond almost anything that I ever witnessed. 
Above, the inky black sky ; on all sides, dense wreaths of 
fog scudding swiftly past and completely enveloping the sea 
which moaned dismally at the base of the cliffs below ; about 
the top of the tower, a belt of light projected some thirty yards 
into the mist by the powerful reflectors ; and in this belt 
swarms of birds, circling, floating, soaring, now advancing, 
next retreating, but never quite able, as it seemed, to throw 
off the spell of the fatal lantern. Their rapidly vibrating 
wings made a haze about their forms which in the strong light 
looked semitransparent. At a distance all appeared of a pale, 
silvery-gray color, nearer, of a rich yellow. They reminded me 
by turns of meteors, gigantic moths, swallows with sunlight 
streaming through their wings. I could not watch them for 
any length of time without becoming dizzy and bewildered. 

" When the wind blew strongly, they circled around to lee- 
ward, breasting it in a dense throng, which drifted backward 
and forward, up and down, like a swarm of gnats dancing in 
the sunshine. Dozens were continually leaving this throng 
and skimming toward the lantern. As they approached they 
invariably soared upward, and those which started on a level 
with the platform usually passed above the roof. Others 
sheered off at the last moment, and shot by with arrowlike 
swiftness, while more rarely one would stop abruptly and. 



166 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE. 

poising a few feet from the glass, inspect the lighted space 
within. Often for a minute or more not a bird would strike. 
Then, as if seized by a panic, they would come against the 
glass so rapidly, and in such numbers, that the sound of their 
blows resembled the pattering of hail. Many struck the tin 
roof above the light, others the iron railing which enclosed the 
platform, while still others pelted me on the back, arms, and 
legs, and one actually became hopelessly entangled in my 
beard. At times it fairly rained birds, and the platform, wet 
and shining, was strewn with the dead and dying.^' 

Few of us will ever see the like of this, and yet, watching 
the play of insects about an electric light, do we not see 
something very similar, so nearly the same that the question 
at once rises, Why are not birds killed by electric lights as well 
as by lighthouses ? To a small extent they undoubtedly are 
killed by striking electric lights, especially the tall clustered 
lights used in some cities ; but there are two good reasons 
why more of them are not so destroyed: first, the light- 
houses are placed along the migration routes while the 
electric lights are more often away from these paths of 
travel; and, second, foggy weather is needed to bewilder 
them, especially a sudden fog arising after a clear day, an 
occurrence common at the seashore, but rare inland. If 
there is no fog, the birds do not strike the light, and unless 
the fog comes in after they have begun their night's journey, 
they will not travel that night. Mr. Brewster infers that 
they migrate only on clear, cool nights, and that they are 
unable to forecast the weather for a single night even, else 
such fatal trips as the one he -describes would not occur. 

But why, once involved in a fog, having lost their bear- 
ings and the sight of land, they seek the lighthouse as the 
only object visible is plain, and why once within the circle 



MIGRATION. 167 

of its rays they hasten to their own destruction we can also 
see by looking at an electric light on a foggy evening, seeing 
the halo it builds out upon the mist and the solid fjencils of 
light that stream out from it. A bird striking one of these 
beams of light and seeing nothing beyond but a blank wall of 
darkness, dazzled and bewildered, follows up the ray in which 
he is confined, a cage of light that he cannot break out from, 
until he dashes against the lantern. 

What birds migrate by day and what by night and why 
they differ in their habits, is another interesting problem of 
migration, and those who wish to study further will find in 
the appendix Mr. Brewster's list and his conclusions, reached 
after twenty years of study, which show that not even in 
selecting a time to travel do the birds act without good 
reasons. 

But another point much more likely to attract our attention 
is the way this army is guided, why the birds all go at one 
time, and how those born in a northern home can find their 
way thousands of miles to places they have never seen. We 
shall find that they do not all start at one time, as we com- 
monly think, but begin to slip away weeks before we take 
notice of their departure, the places of those we have been 
acquainted with in our gardens being filled with strangers 
from the north. About the earliest to leave in a body are 
the swallows, the dates of whose departure are easily deter- 
mined, but the others are passing and passing for many 
weeks in a leisurely procession. AVe cannot give a better 
idea of the way the migration is accomplished than b}' quot- 
ing again from Mr. Brewster : — 

"The conditions which cause one flock, or family, or individ- 
ual to start southward are ordinarily so widespread and gen- 
erally operative, that countless flocks, families, and individuals 



168 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE. 

are set in motion at nearly the same time, and the members of 
each flock or family, instead of flying in close order, scatter 
about sufficiently to approach or mingle with the stragglers of 
other flocks or families. Thus in effect they form a continuous 
but straggling army, often hundreds of miles in length, and 
varying in breadth according to the character of the country 
over which it is passing. 

'^ Over a wide, level, and generally uniform region the host 
spreads out in thin order ; following a river valley, it contracts 
and thickens ; and at narrow passes, such as the Straits of 
Mackinac, it focusses its myriads into a solid stream. 

" As is well known, there are certain definite routes or paths 
of migration along which birds pass in especially great num- 
bers. These are usually coast lines, river valleys, or continuous 
mountain ranges. Toward them converge innumerable less 
frequented paths, each of which in turn has still smaller tribu- 
taries of its own. Thus bird streams, like brooks, flow into 
common channels, and each particular region may be said to 
have its bird, as well as water, shed. An important consid- 
eration is that the tributary bird streams follow courses in no 
wise strictly dependent on points of the compass. 

"Bearing these facts in mind, the manner in which birds 
find their way seems very simple. From the height at which 
they fly the country presents the appearance of a map on 
which, in the light of the moon or stars, the mountain ranges, 
plains, lakes, rivers, and seacoasts are more or less distinctly 
outlined for a hundred miles or more in any direction. (Any 
one who has spent a clear night on the summit of a mountain, 
will not question this statement.) Guided by such landmarks, 
the older birds can have no difficulty in following paths which 
they have repeatedly traversed before, and they unquestion- 
ably direct and perhaps lead all the larger flights, although it 



MIGRATION, 169 

is by no means certain that they do this in a systematic man- 
ner, or that their leadership is distinctly recognized or realized 
by the younger birds who accompany or follow them. On the 
contrary, the latter are probably directed as well as perhaps 
urged onward, simply by the contagion of general example and 
a desire to keep within sight or hearing of their companions, 

— both strong influences with birds, especially very young ones 
which have only lately passed from a state of complete de- 
pendence and are still not wholly independent. That a very 
few experienced old birds could thus direct and guide the 
movements of thousands of inexperienced young is to my mind 
obvious. ... 

" It is not necessary to assume, nor in my opinion is it likely 
that these flocks keep intact throughout the whole of their long 
journey. . . . But whether among friends or strangers, the 
contagion of example would not fail to act on every favorable 
occasion, at least as long as old birds were present. . . . 

" It may be asked in this connection how the various species 
which start together or join one another during the early stages 
of their journey separate again, as must be the case, when 
they reach a point beyond which their routes diverge. An 
answer to this was suggested at Point Lepreaux by the fact 
that, while many species of birds arrived together on the same 
night, and mingled indiscriminately in the neighboring woods 
during the following day, they did not invariably depart to- 
gether or in exactly the same direction. This leads me to 
believe that similar places along every route constitute what 
may be called stations or points of departure. At such places 

— ordinarily promontories extending into the sea, points of tim- 
ber bordering extensive plains, or the extremities of mountain 
ranges — the migratory tide hesitates and halts before ventur- 
ing on the dangerous stage ahead, and (as we know to be the 



170 PROBLEMS OF BTBT) LIFE, 

case) birds of various species quickly collect, often in extraor- 
dinary numbers. This pause allows the stragglers to come up, 
and when the host again starts, the different leaders are natu- 
rally followed by all the members of their own particular 
species. I believe further that the southern extremity of the ' 
Alleghanies is the chief point of departure in the eastern 
United States. 

^^It may be further objected that the adults of many or, as 
I believe of all, species migrate southward first, and often 
several weeks in advance of the young. It is perfectly true^ 
nevertheless, that a few old birds are always to be found in 
the larger flights, although the latest of these are certainly 
composed mainly of young. The two facts taken in connec- 
tion, however, seem to me to strengthen rather than to weaken 
the conclusions just advanced, for it is evident on the one hand 
that many of the smaller parties must be entirely without ex- 
perienced leaders, and equally clear on the other, that a few 
such guides must always mingle in the armies which these 
parties collectively form. 

"Another possible objection which has occurred to me is 
that the flood-tide of migration is preceded, as well as closed, 
by more or less local or limited movements, during which the 
birds at any one time on the wing must be too few and too 
scattered to constitute an uninterrupted stream. How, then, 
do they find their way ? It may be answered that the earlier 
flights can have no difficulty, for, as already stated, they are 
made up chiefly, if not wholly, of old birds, who, being familiar 
with the route, are independent. With the closing flights 
there is more trouble, for these, as we have also seen, are com- 
posed chiefly, and in some cases entirely, of young. But is it 
necessary to assume that such tardy travellers often reach 
their southern destination, unless fortuitously and after long 



MIGRATION. 171 

wanderings ? Are they not much more likely to perish of 
cold or hunger^ or to furnish some of the many recorded cases 
of exceptional wintering or other unusual occurrence ? As far 
as I have seen, accidental visitors to Massachusetts, almost 
without exception, are young birds, and the majority also are 
taken very late in autumn — facts of obvious significance in 
this connection." 

There is one thing connected with migration that as Amer- 
icans we cannot pass by without mention. Mr. Frank A. 
Chapman has shown us very plainly that without the help of 
the birds, Columbus would not have discovered America. All 
the historians tell us how he was cheered by the sight of land- 
birds '^ that came singing in the morning and flew away again 
in the evening.'' For more than three weeks before they 
sighted land they were thus visited by land-birds ; " some of 
them, such as sing in the fields, came flying about the ships, 
and these continued toward the southwest, and others were 
heard, also, flying by night.'' A week before they came to 
land, Columbus, persuaded that the birds knew whither they 
were going, turned his course also to the southwest, taking 
them as his pilots. And just as he predicted, they did lead 
him to land two hundred and fifteen miles, according to the 
historian Fiske, nearer than the coast of Florida for which he 
had been steering. That he could ever have held his muti- 
nous sailors in check long enough to cross so great a distance 
is hardly possible. He was well guided and was happy in 
trusting his heaven-sent pilots. 

But we do not yet understand how almost by miracle it was 
that he fell in with these flights of birds. ^Ir. Chapman was 
the first to point out to us the real significance of the event. 
The Bermuda Islands are one of the " stations " on the way of 
the migrating armies, and the Bahamas, where Columbus 



172 PROBLEMS OF BIRD LIFE. 

landed, are another. All the land-birds that touch at the Ber- 
mudas take a southwest course to the Bahamas, so that Colum- 
bus was running across the line of their annual flight before 
he changed his course and followed them. But this migration, 
though it carries myriads of birds, lasts but a short season. 
Had Columbus come too early, he Avould have seen no birds, 
and a few days later the hosts would have been already in 
their Southern homes. As Mr. Chapman says : '' After nearly 
twenty years of disappointment, a delay of ten days at Palos 
would not have seemed of much importance. But if Columbus 
had sailed from Palos September 16th, or, using the ^ new 
style,' September 26th, he would have seen few migratory land- 
birds, or none. Whether, in their absence, he would have had 
sufficient influence over his men to force them to continue a 
westward course, is an open question ; but we can clearly see 
that, without the presence of birds, his efforts at allaying their 
fears would have been seconded by no really conclusive signs 
of land." 

And so all good Americans must be thankful to the birds. 
Had it not been for their guidance, the whole course of Ameri- 
can history would have been changed, and, indeed, the history 
of the whole world would have been different. For all we 
owe to the birds, both in protecting our fields and orchards, 
and in guiding Columbus to land, are we not bound to be bird 
protectors, and good friends of theirs ? 



PAKT lY. 

SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 



LITTLE STUDIES IK THE ART OE OBSEEVATION. 

"As for fowling, during the last that I carried a gun, my excuse was 
that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. 
But I confess, I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of 
studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention 
to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been will- 
ing to omit the gun." — Thoreau, Walden. 



ABOUT BIRDS' DRINKING. 

If you wish to make an experiment that will cost little 
trouble and will give much pleasure^ try for a summer the 
plan of keeping a drinking dish for the birds, in some spot 
loved by them. A bit of shrubbery, the neighborhood of the 
grape vine, the side of a hedge, are usually spots that they 
frequent, and the best of all is near a tree or bush Avhich bears 
fruit worthless to any one but the birds. An old tin baking- 
pan, not so deep as to be dangerous, or else a little tilted so 
that the water may shoal off gradually, is a bath tub that will 
attract birds all summer long. 

Birds love fresh water, and unless the dish is kept neat 
and clean, they will not use it much. If it is kept in good 
order and freshly filled, you will find that all the birds know 
about it. Keep a list of the different kinds that come, and. 
if you can, of the different birds. Some birds, by their voices, 
their manners, or some peculiar marking, will be readily 
recognized, and you will know Billy, or Peep, or Spot, or 
whatever you choose to name him. Notice the time of day 
when each kind prefers to come to bathe, and you will see 
that they have preferences. There are early birds, just as 
the proverb tells us, and there are birds that are late abroad, 
birds that are particular about the temperature of their bath, 
and others that find nothing too cold for them. I have seen 
the little juncos, early in March, splashing in an ice-edged 
pool, and singing as cheerily as if March were ]\Iay. 

Birds differ in their dispositions as much as people, and it 
is not a little amusing to watch the selfish bird, or the timid 

175 



176 SOME COMMON LAND-BIEDS, 

bird, or the bird who knows it all. Some demand the whole 
bath for themselves; others are content to share it; some dip 
and spatter in one way, while others dress and preen them- 
selves after quite a different fashion. It was always amusing 
to me to see a certain motherly old robin, who was in the 
greatest temper if any other bird attempted to use the bath 
while she was in it. She always intended to have the whole 
pan — and got it, though not at other times noticeably over- 
bearing to the other little birds. There, too, those feathered 
ruffians, the English sparrows, met their match in the purple 
finches, whose company the sparrows seemed to desire so much 
that they acted the toady quite humanly, and meekly followed 
their bright-coated cousins about, pretending to peck at the 
fallen mountain ash berries, though they despised such food. 

While you are watching birds drink, please observe the way 
a pigeon drinks. All pigeons drink in the same way, and no 
other birds drink like them. The difference is well worth 
observing if you do not remember what it is. But there are 
other points of interest about birds' drinking ; not only how, 
but what they drink. What do you suppose the albatrosses 
drink, and the fulmars, the shearwaters, the petrels, and all 
those birds that wander continually on the high seas and never 
come to land except to nest ? Salt water undoubtedly. There 
is no record that they do this, and some persons have supposed 
that because a man would die of thirst if he drank sea-water, 
it would affect these birds in the same way, and that therefore 
they never drink at all. This certainly is bad reasoning. All 
the probabilities are against it, as we shall see. 

There is a class of birds that live part of the year on the 
seacoast and part of the year inland, like the grebes, the loons, 
and those gulls and terns that nest upon the prairies and by 
the shores of inland lakes. Half the year they can get noth- 



ABOUT birds' drinking, 177 

ing but salt water to drink, and the other half they are unable 
to get anything but fresh water. Either they must drink both 
or they live without drinking half the year. 

There is a pretty little story that shows their need of water. 
Some years ago a gentleman had two little downy kittiwake 
gulls which he intended to keep as pets. He gave them food 
and water, but they would not drink, and in two days one was 
dead and the other was not likely to live long. Everything 
possible was done for him, and at last to please him a bucket 
of salt water was dipped up to give him a bath and a swim. 
To the surprise of every one he drank the salt water eagerly. 
He was dying of thirst, but of thirst for salt water, never 
having learned to drink anything else. He grew up to be a 
beautiful bird and a great pet, but he never changed his habit 
of drinking salt water. 

Yet this is not an invariable habit with sea-birds, for terns, 
when nesting on low, sandy islands like Muskegat, have been 
observed to drink from the pools of rain-water standing in 
the hollows of the island. Therefore these birds can drink 
both fresh and salt water, and often are unable to get any- 
thing but salt water. Which is more reasonable to suppose. 
that the petrels and albatrosses do not drink at all, or that, 
like the terns, they drink salt water ? 

The hunters along the Maine coast have told me an inter- 
esting fact. They especially prize the black mallard, or dusky 
duck, often called the " black duck,'' though it is not black : 
yet they find him so wary that he is hard to approach. 
Now the dusky duck is naturally an inland bird, and goes 
to salt water only when his food supply is cut oft' by the 
freezing of the ponds. But he has a craving for fresh water 
to drink, which the hunters know and take advantage of. 
In winter after a thaw with heavy rains, the brooks rise siui- 

N 



178 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 

denly and pour out a great volume of fresh water, which, being 
lighter than the salt water of the ocean, runs out upon it as 
it would upon ice before the two commingle. So after a rain 
the dusky ducks gather about the mouths of streams running 
into the ocean to drink the fresh water, and here the hunters 
come to find them. It is worth noticing that the scoters or 
'' coots,'' which are true sea ducks, never come inshore to drink. 
Here are some little points for bright eyes to settle. Who 
can make a list of the birds that quench their thirst by eating 
snow ? Does a hawk ever drink, when wild ? And who has 
ever seen a woodpecker drinking or bathing ? And what birds 
take dust baths instead of water baths ? 



HOW A HAWK EATS HIS FOOD. 

We must not forget that there are very many kinds of hawks 
which feed on everything from grasshoppers and snakes to 
squirrels and partridges, so that their ways of eating must vary 
somewhat ; but we will study only one, the one that even city 
children may sometime chance to see, our little sharp-shinned 
hawk, the boldest fellow for his inches that wears feathers, 
excepting only the humming-bird. Since the sparrows became 
so abundant, he has learned to come into the cities after them, 
and in winter he may sometimes be seen in our parks or along 
our avenues, chasing the sparrows, without fear of the multi- 
tudes of passers-by or of the thundering traffic of the streets. 
He is equally at home in the silent recesses of the forest and 
about the wind-swept tops of our bald mountains, where I have 
often found a little heap of quill-feathers that told me who had 
been eating my friends the junco and the chickadee in that 
lonely place. 

It is odd, too, that my only two opportunities to learn any- 
thing of the feeding habits of this bold killer of little birds 
should have been once in the heart of the crowded city and 
once in the solemn quiet of the great woods. 

My first chance came to me in the city of Charlestown, Massa- 
chusetts, along its busiest street. I looked out at just the 
right moment, and there in an elm tree, on a level with the 
second-story window and not thirty feet away, his long tail 
blowing in the winter wind, was a sharp-shinned hawk ^^'ith 
a sparrow pinned imder one foot. AAliat a fierce, alert bird 
he was, with his keen yellow eye ranging on all sides for 

179 



180 SOME COMMON LAND-BIEDS. 

danger^ as he crouched there, plucking his victim and letting 
the feathers drift away on the wind. What his next work 
would have been after the bird was plucked I could not tell, 
I only saw the long wing- and tail-quills drop slowly down- 
ward, and the lighter feathers float away like thistle-down ; for 
some noise or sight alarmed him and he sailed away, bearing his 
victim in his claws. 

A year later, in the Maine woods, where the river leaps 
tumultuously over the Indian Falls on Webster Stream, I 
took from the claws of a hawk just killed the yet warm body 
of a little warbler that he was eating. It could not be identified 
further, for the head was gone and every feather had been 
stripped from it so neatly that not one was left to name it by. 
The intestines also had been taken out by a rip down the back 
and all the blood had been drunk up. It was the second stage 
of the sharp-shinned hawk's preparations for dinner — or the 
first course, we may say; for most carnivorous creatures are 
fond of the brain of their quarry, and all the hawks that I have 
seen will eat the head for their first mouthful. The sharp- 
shin is also bloodthirsty in its most literal sense, and will drink 
the blood with evident relish while it is warm. More than 
once I have seen him taken fresh from the killing, and his bill 
was bloody to the cere. 

Unless his large cousin, the Cooper's hawk, is equally 
dainty, the sharp-shinned is the nicest of our raptores. The 
broad-winged hawk will not trouble to skin a squirrel or even 
the portions of a rabbit that he eats, and the goshawk, after 
stripping off the quills and a few of the larger feathers, will 
bolt a large hen, joint by joint, in less time than it would take 
to describe the process. With his strong claws he tears out 
the wings at the shoulder and the legs at the hip and swal- 
lows them at a gulp. None of our hawks is so bold, so power- 




Fig. 41. — sharp-shinned HAWK. 



Facing page 181. 



HOW A HAWK EATS HIS FOOT). 181 

fill, and so cruel as this great robber of the north which comes 
in winter to the Northern states and is at once consjjicuous by 
his boldness, by his long tail and round wings, and by his steel- 
blue upper parts when in full plumage, or his strijjed breast 
when immature. 

These three — the goshawk which is rare, the little sharp- 
shinned hawk, and his large cousin, the Cooper's hawk, which 
you would probably mistake for a very large sharp-shinned 
hawk unless you noticed critically the shape of the end of the 
tail and the color of the top of the head — are the three most 
destructive hawks. For all the others some good word can 
be said. 

The sharp-shinned hawk has a double, the pigeon hawk, so 
near like himself in size and color that even if you had both 
in your hand you probably could not distinguish them until 
advised how to do so. But besides differences in the bill, 
the pigeon hawk's wings are sharp and pointed, while the 
sharp-shinned hawk's are round. The two birds also fly very 
differently, so that it is not hard to distinguish them in life. 

Are their feeding habits alike ? I never saw the pigeon 
hawk eat, but I have watched him clean himself up after a 
meal. He was very leisurely about it, and must have spent at 
least thirty minutes on his toilet, opening his tail and laying 
the feathers in perfect order, spreading each wing and dress- 
ing the quills with his bill, and putting up his claws to clean 
his bill of feathers. I had not supposed that making its toilet 
was such serious business with a hawk. 

Before we leave the subject let us look for a moment at the 
hawk's foot. The sharp-shinned hawk, as you have guessed, 
gets its name from its long slender legs. The tarsi and toes 
are so thin that the bird looks spindle-shanked, and wo note a 
peculiar modilication of the foot on this aecoiint. There are 



182 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 

heavy pads under each joint, it is true, to enable the bird to 
grasp as firmly as possible whatever it lays hold of ; but that 
is not what I mean. Do you see that the middle toe is so long 
that it will wrap almost around a small bird, and its claw will 
be struck in near the claw of the hind toe ? This is a weak- 
ness. For a strong grip the claws should oppose each other 
fairly and strike the body of the victim, not on the same side, 
but on opposite sides. In the other hawks we find this ar- 
rangement, and we notice that the middle toe bears the largest, 
strongest claw. In this bird we see that it is the inner toe, 
the second toe, that has the largest nail. This toe, then, does 
the same work as the middle toe of the other hawks in the 
capture of small prey, and the long middle toe is of particular 
service with larger game, giving a wider grip and enabling 
the hawk, whether he strikes small game or large, to hold 
with equal security. It is well known that this bold little 
hawk frequently attacks birds larger than himself, which he 
cannot paralyze and cannot carry oft' at once. By this device 
he is enabled to hold on until he tires them out. The very 
possession of such a foot is an evidence of his ferocity and 
bloodthirstiness. 



THE SMALL FLYCATCHEES. 

The old proverb of " a bird in the hand '^ gets a stiff rebuff 
among the small flycatchers. To the amateur naturalist, for the 
purpose of identification, a live flycatcher in the bush, if decently 
tame and sociable, is worth half a dozen dead ones in the hand. 

Those who know about birds may consider it ill-advised 
to introduce young beginners to this puzzling group of the 
little flycatchers ; but the best lesson a novice can learn is 
to single out the largest lion that lies in his pathway, and, 
'' having killed him, to go on singing." The small flycatchers 
are hard to study, especially when they are dead and unable 
to speak for themselves, but as we learn about them we 
find out a remarkable fact. It is that two birds may have 
scarcely a feather's difference between them, may be so near 
alike that only experts can determine the differences, and yet 
may be entirely distinct, so unlike that no one would think 
of calling them the same species. Much as we sometimes envy 
the man who shoots little birds his opportunities for looking at 
every feather, in the case of the little flycatchers the advantage 
lies all on the side of the man who hunts them without a gun. 
Their habits are unlike, their haunts are different, their notes are 
individual, and the nests and eggs vary with each species so that 
they are identified even more readily than the birds themselves. 

Up to a certain point no bird is easier to determine than a 
flycatcher. As far off as you can see or hear him you know 
his ways and his voice. At one hundred and ten measured 
feet I have been able, without a glass, to recognize a plioebe 
merely by the way he sat on a limb, and after a little experi- 
ence any one can readily pick out a flycatcher when no one 

183 



184 SOME COMMON LAND-BIBDS, 

color or mark is visible. They are fond of particular places, 
usually a dry twig^ which gives a clear view and a small perch 
for their tiny feet. Day after day they return to the same 
twig and keep up a patient watch for flies. The wood pewee, 
which has this habit in the most marked degree^ in the South is 
called the ^^ dead-limb bird.'' Often, when he is not at home, one 
can pick out his favorite perch by the signs of long occupation. 

For all that the flycatchers sit so still, they are nervous 
birds. The snapping of their bills, the quick twitching of 
their tails, and their short, abrupt motions are a strong 
contrast to the composed industry of the vireos and warblers. 
As they sit on their perches, the flycatchers are big-headed, 
square-shouldered, erect little birds, and their tails hang straight 
down over the limb. Close at hand one notices the large, round, 
buff-ringed eyes, full of intelligence and decision, and the 
breadth of bill, which gives them a wide-mouthed look. In 
color, all the small flycatchers — except a bright scarlet one 
that lives in Mexico and along the southwestern boundary — 
are much alike, — a dull brownish olive, with lighter, sometimes 
quite yellowish, underparts and with two light wing-bands. 
The shade varies, especially with the season, but the pattern 
of coloration never does. 

The flycatching habit from which they get their name 
is not peculiar to this family. Some woodpeckers are ex- 
pert flycatchers; a number of the warblers find much of 
their food in this way ; I have seen chipping sparrows 
catching insects at odd intervals and other birds, the king- 
fisher for example, will do it now and then; but the 
manner of sitting still and erect, the habit of twitching the tail, 
and the tuneless voice, are characteristic of the flycatchers. 
From three to five of these little birds are found in most 
localities, the species varying with the place. 




Fig. 42. — PHCEBE. 



Facing page 185. 



THE SMALL FLYCATCHERS. 185 

No bird is more sociable than the least flycatcher, or chebec. 
He likes to live with people, in orchard and shade trees, and 
prefers to nest in an apple tree. He is fond of society, and 
will, by preference, take a perch that commands your windows 
or your piazza, where he will sit and snap his bill and chebec 
at you with intelligent sprightliness. How much the little 
fellow wants to talk ! What sensible remarks he appears capa- 
ble of making ! His big head seems full of ideas ; he wants 
to tell you something, and men are so stupid ! There is good 
reason for his sharp, snappy remarks, interrupted now and 
then by little turns of flycatching. 

The wood pewee is quite a different bird. He does not 
court society, but sits high up in a tree, an elm or maple when 
in village streets, and from his retirement drawls out his slow 
pee-e-wee or pee-er-ree. It is hot weather music, languid and 
listless, as fitted to the warmth of June and July as is the 
cicada's z4ng to the heat of August. We see little of the wood 
pewee, though he is common enough. Every year he nests in 
my garden; but, as he builds some thirty or forty feet above 
the ground, in the limbs of the bushiest maples, I never find 
his nest till autumn strips off the leaves. I am accustomed to 
his retired, listless, melancholy ways, credit him with being 
here when I hear his pee-er-ree, and do not much court his 
companionship when he seems not to care for mine. 

Phoebe is larger and browner than the others, seeks more 
open locations, and builds about outhouses, and farms, and 
beneath bridges, especially in deserted houses and the horse- 
sheds attached to country churches. Phoebe is a brisk, alert 
bird, always calling ovitphoeb^! phoebe ! peicit phcebe. and click- 
ing her bill as she snaps her tail back and forth. Sometimes, 
on one of her sallies, she will catch several insects before 
feturning to her perch. Few birds are so domestic as pho?be. 



180 SOME COMMON LAXD-BIRDS. 

She builds near man, and spends her time among his groves 
and orchards. As she is an early comer, her spring greeting 
is always welcome ; and as she has no bad habits, she never 
wears her welcome out. 

These are the commonest small flycatchers of the East, and 
with the kingbird make up the bulk of those we meet. Some- 
times a great-crested flycatcher will build her nest, wreathed 
with snakeskins, in a hole in a tree, or an olive-sided fly- 
catcher will mount guard over some remote meadow and warn 
off all intruders with his harsh cries ; but more often the new 
bird, if we find a new one, will be a small bird, of the size and 
color of the chebec. He will be a source of perplexity wher- 
ever he occurs because he will do things that the chebec 
does not do. I first noticed him because he acted so much like 
a chebec gone crazy. There were half a dozen of them in a 
fringe of willows between a sloping field and the marsh where 
the red-winged blackbirds lived. Instead of sitting out in 
plain view, they kept inside the willows out of sight ; instead 
of darting out after flies, they flew upward, with a loud, pecul- 
iar note, turned a somersault above the tree, and dived again 
into the middle of it. It was quite impossible to believe that 
they were sedate, inquisitive little chebecs like those that 
nested in our garden and perched on the bean-poles to inspect 
the hoeing and to talk to us. As indeed they were not, but 
the alder flycatcher, the Eastern subspecies of the Traill's fly- 
catcher. This bird is fond of the neighborhood of water, and 
is seldom seen far away from low land ; just as the least fly- 
catcher, or chebec, is not common away from cultivated 
grounds, as the Acadian, or green-crested flycatcher is the 
inhabitant of upland groves of beeches, and as the yellow- 
bellied flycatcher is a denizen of evergreen growth. 

The nests are almost a sure means of identifying all these 



THE SMALL FLYCATCU EliS, 187 

little flycatchers. The phoebe is the only bird that habitually 
builds under bridges or inside of deserted houses, and any fly- 
catcher's nest discovered in such a place may be safely called 
hers. A nest in an evergreen tree near the water, saddled 
high up on an outstretched limb, is the olive-sided flycatcher's; 
but this is a rare, northern species. A flycatcher's .nest found 
upon the ground is the yellow-bellied flycatcher's, and this 
will be sure to be a bulky nest of moss and leaves sunk in a 
mossy bank or between tree roots, in evergreen growth and 
usually near running water. A flycatcher's nest found low 
down in a bush near water is the Traill's, or the alder fly- 
catcher's, which builds a bulky nest about four feet from the 
ground, in the upright forks of a willow, alder, or aspen, or 
even, in the Northwest, among ferns. The chebec builds a 
smaller nest, puts it higher up, usually selects an apple tree or 
some bush or tree near cultivated land. She lays a buffy 
white ^^^, not speckled like the Traill's flycatcher and the 
wood pe wee's, and very much smaller than the big spotted Qgg 
of the kingbird, which chooses similar places. The Acadian, 
or green-crested flycatcher, lives among beech woods prin- 
cipally ; and there in the end fork of a drooping branch, such 
a place as a red-eyed vireo would choose, constructs a shallow, 
flimsy nest, not to be mistaken for the vireo's deep cup 
wrought of birch-bark and hornet's nest. The wood pewee 
builds a shallow nest and saddles it upon a limb high up in 
a maple or other shade tree — a nest noticeably unlike the 
deeper, cup-shaped nests of most of the other small flycatch- 
ers. Thus each one has her own way of building, though all 
dress and look nearly alike, and by the house they leave be- 
hind them, we may identify the bird that made it, though if 
we had the bird in our own hands we might not be able to tell 
its name. 



SPEIXG IX WESTERN 0REG0:N\ 

THE BOOMIXG OF THE SOOTY GROUSE. 

Spring in western Oregon is perhaps as welcome and as 
beautiful as spring in any part of the country ; for if it does 
not follow a cold and snowy winter^ it brings sunshine after 
a season of cloud and constant rain. What a joy it is to see 
Mount Hood blinking in the steam drawn up by the warm 
sun from the water-soaked ground, while a Western meadow- 
lark on a fence, with the sunshine in his beautiful breast, 
sings us into summer ! Mount Hood and the Western meadow- 
larks always seem to belong together as two of the surpassing 
creations of the Lord. As the mountains of the East are less 
grand than these snow-capped monarchs of the Coast Eange, 
so the Eastern meadow-lark, with his sweet, melancholy te-lee- 
e-ri-6^ is no way to be compared with this glorious songster of 
the West, who is thrush and skylark and nightingale in one. 
If he is not our best singer, — ■ and on that point there has 
been some discussion, — he at least comes upon the stage 
when his presence is most effective ; '^ For, lo, the winter is 
past, the rain is over and gone ; the flowers appear on the 
earth ; the time of the singing birds is come.'' 

Late March and early April in western Oregon are a time 
of gladness to the woods wanderer. The mud is drying 
enough to render roads and woods passable, and the birds and 
blossoms are making everything gay. From the brilliant 
yellow skunk-cabbage, that looks like a calla-lily, and the 
golden clumps of the Mahonia, or ^^ Oregon grape,'' to the 

188 




Fig. 4;i. — socvrv (;kouse. 



Facing- page 188, 



SPRING TN WESTERN OREGON, 189 

soft-pink salmon berry and fire-pink wild currants^ the native 
spring flowers by the roadside strike a high note of cohjr. 
There is a marked contrast to our own delicate^ pale-colored, 
spring blossoms. 

What most impresses an Easterner going to the North- 
west coast is that all is so familiar and yet so dift'erent. 
It becomes confusing, like well-known voices speaking from 
unknown presences. When we stop to think, it seems as 
if something had happened to us instead of to the flowers. 
Here are white trilliums, dog-tooth violets, yellow violets, 
and lady's-sorrel, among other old favorites, but all twice 
as large as those at home and many of them curiously 
different in color. There are more yellow flowers than at 
home ; blue flowers are replaced by white ; white ones take 
a flush of pink. It seems quite homelike to see a familiar 
flower until it turns up a strange face when you stoop to pet it. 

And yet there is much that is the same. The coast of 
Puget Sound might be the Maine seacoast, but that it is less 
rocky and irregular. The woods of Washington and Oregon 
have much in common with the primeval forest, now almost 
gone, that once overspread all New England. In many 
sections there are no round-topped, hardwood trees to fill up 
the distant prospect, and the tall, spire-pointed pines march 
up the foothills in loose ranks, — but they are pines ; and the 
fir tree does not badly simulate the old-growth hemlock of 
our Eastern forests. And when, in some upland gully, among 
brakes and alders, I have scared the ruffed grouse from his 
drumming-log, it all seemed home once more. But the alders 
overhead were a forest ; the brakes in the open rose above 
my shoulders ; the drumming-log was five feet through. In 
this enchanted forest only the partridge and myself were of 
the right dimensions, and he, too, was different. The familiar 



190 • SOME COMMON LAND-BIBBS. 

aspect wore away and left me once more bewildered by a 
newness that was not new. 

Among the birds many are old friends, some just the same 
and some a little changed. Eave and barn and tree swallows 
twitter and sport in the air, and with them is a new acquaint- 
ance, the violet-green swallow. The social chimney swift is 
lacking, but his place in the air, if not in our affections, is 
filled by the rarer and more retiring Vaux's swift, which still 
nests in hollow trees as a bird of the wilderness. A towhee 
in black and ivhite and chestnut, apparently our own, shows 
his unlikeness by mewing at you from the lower boughs of 
an evergreen. It is the Oregon towhee, an unfamiliar species, 
though from his color you would never guess it. A junco 
spreads his white-edged tail as he flits to one side ; but it is 
the Oregon junco, a little browner on the back and sides than 
ours, though similar in habits. When I found its nest in a 
horse's hoof -print in a deserted woods-road, it seemed to me in 
all respects like our little Eastern j unco's home in bank sides 
and under tree roots. In the woods, the ruffed grouse that you 
hear drumming is the Oregon ruffed grouse — our bird in all 
save the brighter red-brown tinge of the back. On a high 
branch a flicker — but the red-shafted flicker of the North- 
west coast — whickers familiarly, and where the timber is 
heavy our old Maine friend, the pileated woodpecker, the 
king of all the Northern woodpeckers, raps unseen at his work, 
or cackles on his undulating flight from tree to tree. 

Mingled with those we recognize are other birds new 
and strange, — the dark-colored Steller's jay that replaces our 
blue jay ; the red-breasted sapsucker, a gayer substitute for 
our yellow-bellied sapsucker, at a distance nearly resembling 
our red-headed woodpecker ; the Oregon jay, as hoary-headed 
a villain as our Canada jay, and no improvement in either 



SPRING IN WESTERN OEEGON. 191 

manners or morals on that soft-spoken reprobate. The pygmy 
nuthatch runs up and down the tree trunks, the Audubon's 
and the hermit warblers sport in the branches on the edge of 
the woods, and to a lone tree in a clearing a Lewis's woodpecker 
Haps her heavy flight, betraying the secret of her nest to all 
observers. These are the familiar sights near the borders 
of an Oregon forest. 

Sometimes in following up one of the clear mountain streams 
of Oregon, cold, green, and sparkling, that sweep down through 
the deep, narrow caiions from their sources among the moun- 
tain snows, one may hear among the scattered firs or pines 
above the undergrowth, the love-call of the sooty grouse. It is 
a sound equally hard to locate and to describe. The residents 
sometimes call it ^^ hooting'' and sometimes ^'booming." You 
may look high for it, you may look low for it, but you wdll not 
be able to tell whether it is near at hand or far away. The 
best way, perhaps, is not to seek the voice but to look out 
from some convenient resting-place halfway up the canon 
side, where you are on a level with the branches of the trees 
below you. From such an outlook you may sometimes see the 
male grouse in the very act of booming. 

He is a bird as large as a hen, dull-colored and unin- 
teresting in appearance, a mingled black and slatey black, 
with a few whitish markings that only help to blend 
his color with the dark shadows of the Oregon forest. 
Above each eye is a featherless tract, and on the neck 
of the male are two pouches of bare skin, which ordinarily 
are hidden from view by the feathers. lu the spring, 
however, when the male bird booms, these pouches undergo 
a change and become a pinkish orange. During the act of 
booming they stand out like small oranges on each side of xho 
bird's head. Whether the noise is caused in taking the air 



192 SOME COMMOy LAND-BIBDS. 

into the pouches, or in letting it escape no one can say ; but it 
seems not unlikely that it is the escaping air, rushing through 
the vocal cords, that creates the sound, just as in penny- whis- 
tles it is the escape of the air from the inflated rubber bag 
that does the whistling. At least, if you watch the sooty 
grouse, you will see that his bill is oj^e/i when the noise is 
made. On the other hand, when a horned owl hoots his bill is 
closed. 

When he booms, the male grouse takes up his position on a 
horizontal limb fifty feet or more from the ground, and, sitting 
crosswise of his perch, crouches low, with wrings drooping and 
tail spread. The air sacks swell till they almost hide the 
head, the red skin above the eye rises like a comb, the bill is 
opened, the sacks contract and dilate and '- poom-poom-poom- 
um-poom '' sounds the mellow love-call over the canon. Five 
or six times in succession is the ^' poom-p)oom-poom-um-p)oom^^ 
repeated before the bird stops to rest. 

The female is not visible. Perhaps, as in the case of 
the ruffed grouse, her presence makes no difference in the 
performance, which is for the male's own delight rather than 
to attract a mate. While the male is booming, she may be 
dusting her feathers on some dry knoll, or she may be 
hopping from branch to branch as she leisurely climbs to 
the top of a tall fir tree, or she may be sitting cross- 
wise of a limb looking out over the caiion. She listens to the 
mellow love-call of her mate, she basks in the warm spring 
sun, and, while the spring lasts, before the summer cares of 
the family have come, or the autumn fear of gunners in the 
" open season,'' or the dripping winter rains have made the 
woods a sodden swamp, she enjoys the greatest peace and 
leisure of her life. 

If it were possible to linger in the oozy, mossy forests of 



SPRING IN WESTERN OREGON. 193 

the Northwest, we should meet many new birds and should 
become more and more impressed with the effect of climate 
upon a bird's color. A bright winter day is rare. Everything 
is wet, mossy, oozy. Houses, rocks, and trees are covered with 
nioss. The hardwood trees are draped with moss, the ever- 
greens with ferns that grow up the trunks and along the 
branches, and hang down like the fringes on buckskin leggings. 
A thousand rivulets and streams gush from the edges of the 
forest and pour into the larger streams and rivers. A rising 
vapor or a falling mist marks the difference between fair 
weather and foul. The effect of all this gloom and moisture 
becomes very apparent when we notice the birds that do not 
migrate. The summer visitors, who stay only during the 
bright and beautiful season, would hardly be much affected by 
the climate. The residents, on the other hand, are apt to be 
larger than their Eastern relatives, darker, and with a dull 
slate-gray cast which matches well the gloomy woods about 
them, as if the clear colors had been soaked out of their plu- 
mage. The song-sparrow becomes a streaked brown, the flicker 
grows dull-colored, the jays are dark, the bright rufous fox 
sparrow turns to a slatey brown. The sooty grouse which 
we have just been observing is notably dull-colored. There is 
one exception. The ruffed grouse of the Northwest coast 
loses his cool clear grays and browns and becomes distinctly 
rufous. Why is it that the climate should affect one bird in 
one way and another in a different way ? This is one of the 
naturalist's problems; even a 'child might ask the question, 
but the wise men have not yet answered it. 



A WmTEE RESIDENT. 

THE RUFFED GROUSE. 

" The north wind doth blow, 
And we shall have snow. 
And what will poor robin do then ? 
Poor thing ! 

''He'll sit in the barn, 
And keep himself warm. 
And hide his head under his wing, 

Poor thing ! " 

But Eobin Hood's barn, where the ruffed grouse spends his 
days and nights, is sometimes a very cold house, especially up 
in Maine, where the mercury shrinks down into the bulb, and 
the snow often lies level with the fences. No matter how 
cold it is, the grouse never goes south; no matter how deep 
the snow is, he must get a living of vegetable food, for never, 
except in summer, when he catches a few grasshoppers, does 
the grouse eat anything else. But what is there in the woods 
in winter for the grouse to eat ? How does he get a living 
when not a leaf, or berry, or green thing is above the snow ? 

If you are driving along country roads iu early morning or 
at nightfall, you may expect to see him gathering one of his two 
daily meals. Up in a poplar, or a birch tree, he will be stand- 
ing, snapping off the brittle ends of the twigs. Sticks, noth- 
ing but sticks, are his supper. And for many months in the 
year he feeds on sticks. Sometimes, in the city, warm even 

194 







i«^.: ■"' 









i\^ 



,.<^/; 



Fig. 44. — ruffed GROUSE. 



Facing page 194. 



A WINTER RESIDENT, 195 

in winter nights under the blanket of smoke which overhangs, 
and abounding in dainties of all kinds, my thoughts turn to 
the ruffed grouse in a bare tree-top, picking his supper of 
frozen twigs before he goes to his bed in the cold snow; 
houseless, unsheltered, knowing no change of diet the long 
winter through, yet always plump and contented. Brave bird ! 
he loves the cold and his plain, bitter food. 

To us, poplar is unpalatable, but it is the ruffed grouse's 
stalf of life. Not only does he eat poplar buds and twigs all 
winter, varying them only by the addition of yellow- and white- 
birch buds, and occasionally by the buds of apple, hornbeam, or 
willow; but he resorts to poplar long before the snows have 
driven him into the tree-tops. He not only " buds '^ as the 
hunters say, during the fall, but sometimes, even in August, 
when his bill of fare is almost unlimited, he eats heartily of the 
hard, sapless leaves of the poplar. And late in spring, too, he 
continues to live by the poplar, eating the catkins even when 
they are three inches long, and look like great woolly cater- 
pillars. But in spring he also eats the willow buds and the 
pretty ^^ pussies,*' or willow catkins. As the willow contains a 
purple dye, a grouse that has been feeding long on them will 
have its stomach and intestines dyed bright purple. 

As the snow melts, the grouse goes down upon the ground and 
picks the young leaves just coming up and the older ones that 
have remained green under the snow — checkerberry leaves and 
berries, goldthread leaves, clover and strawberry leaves, and, 
later, the strawberries, together with raspberries and black- 
berries in summer, rose-hips when they ripen, sweet elder- 
berries, thorn plums in the fall, black alder berries to some 
extent, and rarely a little rock fern or tree-growing fungus. 
Beechnuts are a favorite food, as they are for deer, bear, porcu- 
pines, and other wood's creatures. The ruffed grouse will eat as 



196 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS, 

many as eighty of the sharp-angled little nuts and appear not 
to mind their points and corners. 

It takes a great quantity of food to satisfy the grouse. Of 
poplar twigs he will eat a cupful for a meal if left to satisfy 
his appetite undisturbed. After a full meal his crop is swelled 
enormously, for he keeps them in his crop until he has col- 
lected his full supply. Thus, like the cow and other ruminant 
animals, he can gather a supply quickly and digest at his 
leisure, in some more retired and safer spot, if necessary. 

Supper gathered, the ruffed grouse seeks his bed. Some- 
times he settles down in a sheltered nook; sometimes, and 
especially in snowy weather, he dives quite beneath the light 
snow and lets it fall upon him like a coverlet of down. These 
are his warmest nights. If he likes his quarters, he may stay 
beneath the snow for several days, picking up goldthread 
leaves, or beechnuts, or checkerberry leaves, or whatever food 
lies beneath the snow. Is it dark there ? Not mirk dark, I 
fancy, but like being down cellar when the windows are 
blocked with snow, for the snow is translucent — a soft light 
comes through it as through a porcelain lamp-shade. Soft, 
dry snow also contains a large amount of air, so that the 
grouse can breathe easily under the snow. 

If the storm change to rain, forming a stiff crust above him, 
he has, as it were, a glass roof to his house. But that he is ever 
imprisoned beneath the crust and dies there, as we so often 
read, there is little likelihood. I have never known a case that, 
when followed up, proved to be more than hearsay. Wher- 
ever the snow is deep, the grouse lives easily beneath the 
crust, wandering at will beneath it in search of food, and com- 
ing out either by bursting up through it or by picking an exit in 
some place where the crust is weak. The only accident I ever 
knew to happen to a grouse in winter was_ when one had his 



A WINTER RESIDENT. 197 

tail feathers frozen into the damx) snow so that a man caught 
him alive. After the greatest ice storm on record in eastern 
Maine, when the crust would bear up a two-horse team and the 
trees were bowed to the ground with the weight of the ice 
frozen upon every bough and twig, the grouse were budding 
as usual the next day. But they had changed their habits to 
meet the emergency. They were feeding at noon instead of 
at night ; and, instead of sitting quietly to eat, they flew from 
perch to perch, striking the limbs with such force as to rattle 
off showers of crystal fragments that fell tinkling on the hard 
crust below. Had they waited till their usual hour, the even- 
ing frosts would have set the ice immovably upon the twigs, 
while now it was loosened by the warm noon sun. 

It may seem to you not difficult to discover a bird nearly as 
large as a hen, sitting in the top of a leafless tree ; but I think, 
indeed I know, that you will find it hard to see the budding 
grouse even when it is pointed out to you, and that you will 
not, without aid or experience, be able to discover half of those 
that are in plain sight. Unexperienced observers see the grouse 
only by accident. John, James, and Jack go clattering home 
from town at sunset with rattling whiffletrees and creaking 
bob-sleds, shouting from team to team about the March meet- 
ing or market prices, and the noise does not startle the old 
cock ruffed grouse, budding almost over their heads as they 
pass. Ask John if they are common, and he will tell you: 
" There ain't scursely no patridge this year. I ain't seen one. 
They was all killed off by last winter's snow." The birds are 
there but he does not know how to see them. 

When sitting still the grouse blends with the background 
against which he is seen, or else he resembles some inani- 
mate object so nearly that it is more a matter of instinct 
than of eyesight to pick him out from his surroundings. 



198 SOME COMMON LAXB-BIBBS, 

At a distance, against the red sunset, you call him a bunch 
of dead leaves ; close at hand, if back to you, he blends 
with the tree trunk behind him ; side to, the dark back clings 
to the poplar bark, the light breast melts into the pale blue 
sky; front to, his breast appears a bit of white birch stem, 
while the dark sides take the color of the thick birch twigs. 
Every new position seems to hide him and to confuse you. 
But once find him and, like the hidden animals in puzzle pic- 
tures, he becomes so plainly seen that you wonder at your own 
blindness. The grouse knows very well when he is detected, 
and however unsuspicious he may have been before he felt 
human eyes fairly fixed upon him, he is apt to become restless 
or alarmed soon after. Noise he does not mind. Often from 
the windows of a railroad train we may see them, undisturbed 
by the shriek of the locomotive, still quietly budding while 
the train rattles by. Yet, on the other hand, crack a stick, or 
break the crust, or make any noise in approaching them and 
they are alert at once. 

The winter night must be long and tedious to the grouse, 
whether he spends it upon the ground or in some sheltered 
corner among evergreens. As he drowses in the mufiie of his 
feathers, he hears the harping of the north wind through the 
thin birch twigs, or the snap and squeal of frozen trees, crack- 
ing to the heart under the knife of the bitter frost ; he hears 
on the crust the heavy thump of the white hare's feet or the 
ring and tinkle of the wind-packed drift, telegraphing the wild- 
cat's long, soft-footed stride. The wings of his arch enemy, 
the horned owl, brush the fir bough over him, or he wakes 
from dreams of summer to smell the warm breath of a fox so 
near that his terror causes a delay that is almost fatal. 

A light snowfall would have left all the night's adven- 
tures written in bold head-lines on nature's daily news- 



A WINTER RESTDENT. 199 

paper — the fresh fallen snow. A shrewd observer can read 
there the whole story. Where the trefoil tracks are thickest 
was the scene of the hare's dinner party, — poplar on the 
stick was the pi^ce-de-resistance, — and a very merry party 
it was to judge by the number of tracks, until the old 
horned owl swooped down and seized poor Long-ears. How 
scared the others were can be read in these tremendously 
long leaps toward the alder thicket. These light, triple- 
pointed tracks are the grouse's where he alighted and walked 
a few feet toward that little fir tree with down-hanging limbs, 
which stands sheeted in snow like a pointed soldier's tent. 
His bedroom was the slanting lower bough, walled and roofed 
by the drift. This beaded chain straight to his hiding place 
was the fox's track ; that long-paced, round-pitted track the 
wildcat made. And mark the broken level where he tossed 
the snow from the bough above him as he burst up in terror, 
and the wing-strokes in the snow where he struck it three or 
four times before he could gather headway and rise clear. 

So it is written in the snow. Every little while Xature 
prepares a new edition of the great blanket sheet newspaper, 
powders all the fields afresh, and lets the creatures of the 
woods write again the story of their woes and pleasures among 
the personals and in the society columns. There it is reported, 
plain as if in print, that the flying squirrels had a frolic about 
the hollow apple tree ; that the mink caught a trout in the 
open water below the mill-dam ; that the red squirrels had a 
sapping party in the maples, and ate the burrs of the juni- 
pers for dessert; of the snow-bunting's feast of weed-seed 
eaten from a snow table-cover ; how the old porcupine has 
broken out his lumber road between his den in the rocks 
and the tall hemlock; and the shrew-mouse's wanderings 
beneath, the snow were not so crooked and out of the 



200 SOME COMMON LAND-BTRDS, 

light that he could keep them out of the papers, for this 
winding ridge marks the line of his devious tunnelling. It 
is not hard to tell who is out of doors in winter. Whenever 
a creature puts his foot down in the new snow, he signs him- 
self with an unmistakable mark. Only the birds do not 
write themselves in full, but they leave other signs. There 
are the quill feathers dropped by the hawk as he stripped 
them from his prey ; the bark hammered off by the wood- 
pecker ; bud scales scattered by the grosbeaks ; fine weed-seed 
set adrift by linnets, red-polls, snow-buntings, and the hardy 
tree sparrow ; the grouse's track, like a line of feather- 
stitching across the snow. It was a cock grouse, too — see 
the line where he dragged his wings, as he spread his tail and 
strutted like a turkey cock. Long life to you, my fine fellow ! 
But look out for the fox and for the man with a gun ! 



THE EAVES-SWALLOW: HOW^ SHE CAME AND 
BUILT HEE NEST. 

Your great-grandfather probably never saw an eaves- 
swallow until he was a man grown. As you pass the barn 
and the mother swallow puts out her head and twitters at 
you, as friendly as a kitten, showing the forks of the light 
crescent above her beady eyes, you cannot believe that this 
social little creature was not here to make friends with the 
Pilgrims when they landed. Yet men now living probably 
saw the eaves-swallow arrive from the West. 

We have noticed that the eaves-swallow loves open, sunny 
places, overhanging cliffs, and good, sticky mud. Xow a 
hundred years ago the whole of this country west to Ohio 
was a thickly wooded country but little broken by clearings, 
and with no extensive natural meadows. The clay banks were 
covered by forests ; the cliffs, of which there were indeed 
enough, were under the shadow of great trees, and the whole 
aspect of it to a bird looking down from a height must have 
been dark, green, and gloomy, quite unlike the warm sunshine 
over the Western prairies. There great rivers flowed through 
channels cut in lofty cliffs, and receding with the summer 
heat, left beds of mud for the swallows to work on. Here 
there was nothing to attract a lover of wide space and sunny 
plains. So the eaves-swallows from times unrecorded fluttered 
and digged in the mud banks of the West and plastered their 
nests against the cliffs above. There they were flrst seen by 
naturalists ; by Forster, who gave the lirst description of them 
in 1772; by Audubon, who notes them in 1815 at Henderson, 

201 



202 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 

Ohio^ and in 1819 at Newport, Kentucky ; by Major Long 
and Sir John Franklin, who observed them the next year, 
one in the Rocky Mountains, the other in British America. 
All these early mentions are from the West and very far west 
for those days. 

But, after the Eevolutionary War, the country began to 
grow. Farms spread out and met each other, while the forests 
vanished. The swallow, soaring overhead, could see new open 
spaces to the East, new nesting-places in a region full of 
better cliffs than he had known, and, what was more, full of 
strange, square artificial cliffs that were hollow inside, and 
filled with men and children and cattle, and surrounded by 
house-flies. The abundance of food was an attraction. Houses 
and barns were a new experience to our wild Western swal- 
lows; but they came trustingly, and plastered their cradles 
up under the eaves of the new barns in the clearings, as much 
at home as if they had alwa3^s been civilized. Every year 
the farms grew and the swallows spread along the line of 
them to the East, where houses and barns were still more 
numerous, where hawks seldom dared molest them, and where 
flies were abundant. By the middle of the present century 
they were established in all the New England states as com- 
mon residents. 

Though so numerous where they are found at all, the swal- 
lows are very irregular in their distribution. We may find 
several species in one town, and but one or two in a neighbor- 
ing village, or we may find large tracts almost unvisited by 
swallows. The causes for this are various. A great storm 
has been known to kill nearly all the swallows resident in 
certain places — as a few years since a storm annihilated the 
purple martins of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It may be years 
before a region thus depopulated will be stocked again, since the 



THE EAVKS-HW ALLOW. 203 

young birds naturally return to the place where they were born. 
Or the English sparrows may have driven out the swallows 
from the houses erected for them, as has happened m most 
of our larger New England towns. Or suitable nesting-jjlaces 
may be scarce and the materials for building wanting ; for 
each species of swallow has some peculiar requirement. 

The bank swallow not only desires, but must have, a bank 
to dig in, and the soil must be not too stiff for him to excavate 
with his feeble feet and not so sandy as to cave in upon him 
while he is digging. The rough-winged swallow, which less 
often makes his own hole, likes the deserted burrows of the 
kingfisher. The barn swallow wants a barn whose doors stand 
open or whose owner has kindly made little openings large 
enough for his going in and out. The blue-backed swallow 
demands snug crannies, natural or artificial, and often builds 
in old woodpecker's holes or in the gutters of old-fashioned 
houses. The eaves-swallow wants mud. No less necessary 
is a suitable place on which to plaster it, either a cliff or an 
overhanging clay bank, or the sides of a barn or house with 
sheltering eaves. As human dwellings are now far more 
abundant and convenient than suitable cliffs, the eaves-swallow. 
except in the remotest regions, has entirely lost the original 
cliff-building habit, and is now seldom called by her old name 
of cliff-swallow, but by the new one of eaves-swallow. 

The eaves-swallow cannot use all kinds of mud. To make a 
nest strong enough to support four or five full-grown young 
and one or both parent birds, requires mud that is adhe- 
sive and tenacious, that is, sticky mud, which will not be 
brittle or crumbling when dry. Clay has these properties : so 
the eaves-swallow and the brickmaker, who also helps to build 
houses out of mud, work together on the clay lieds. Nearly 
always about brickyards you will see eaves-swallows if 



204 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 

there are any in the country. The brickmaker bakes his 
clay by fire ; but the swallow hardens hers in the sun, and 
makes it more tenacious by mingling with it rootlets and bits 
of vegetable fibre to hold it closer together. So in the days 
of ancient Egypt, when men built of sun-dried brick, they 
mingled straw with the clay to keep it from crumbling. 

After a shower, when the puddles are still standing in the 
roads or have dried away just enough to leave a creamy 
stretch of mud about their edges, you may have seen a cluster 
of swallows gathered as thick as butterflies around a puddle 
and not unlike them in appearance; for every sv; allow 
balances itself on its tiny feet with its wings raked high in 
air and fluttering above its head. The whole cluster flickers 
its wings unceasingly, and when one rises all the others fly too, 
and they travel home together. Why do they keep their wings 
up so ? And how do they carry their mud ? The first ques- 
tion you may answer for yourself, the last one we can easily 
settle by looking at the spot they have just left. There are 
the little pinholes left by their toe-nails, and in front of these 
are creases an inch long, where the mud was taken. Evidently 
they take the mud with their bills, not with their feet, else 
we should not see the toe marks so distinctly. It is equally 
evident that they must carry the mud in their mouths, for 
their bills are too small to hold any considerable amount. In- 
deed, if you watch them through an opera glass, you will see 
that when they fly home their throats stick out like a chip- 
munk's when his pouches are full of nuts. 

They come and go in companies from the barn to the mud- 
hole. If one gets his mud sooner than the others, he flies 
about once or twice waiting for them to get their loads. Per- 
haps he does not get his full load at one place and rises in a 
circle to drop again and finish filling his throat elsewhere. 



THE EAVES-SWALLOW. 205 

Usually mates do not go together. One stops by the nest and 
rests or works upon it while the other flies after mud. They 
stop and chat a moment together and then change places, the 
loaded newcomer remaining to plaster and build up the home 
while the other joins the outgoing mud-seekers. When the 
nest is small, one bird starts out just as the other arrives ; 
they say, '' How do you do ? '' in passing and waste no time ; 
but when it is nearly finished, and time is not so important to 
them, they sit in the nest and converse a little while. The 
colony I am speaking of went about five hundred yards for its 
mud, — that is, rather more than quarter of a mile, — but no 
doubt they sometimes go much farther. 

The bird with the load of mud, on arriving at the nest, 
rests a moment, then begins retching violently and ejects a 
large ball of mud, which it adds to the edge of the nest. This 
is immediately followed by one or two smaller mouthfuls. 
These are placed more carefully than the first and often seem 
to be mixed in the bird's mouth before they are deposited. 
Perhaps some sticky saliva is worked into them to make them 
adhere more closely to the mass. There is need that the nest 
should be made as firm as possible, for when the young are 
well grown it must support a considerable weight. With us 
the swallows use both the white clay and the blue sea clay. 
The blue marine clay, containing seashells and sea plants and 
still smelling of the briny ocean, underlies the white fresh-water 
clay, which was deposited later. In making bricks men have 
used up the white clay and have worked down to the blue sea- 
deposit. This is valueless for brick-making, but. oddly enough. 
the swallows seem to find it just as good as the other, of whieli 
they can get any amount and quite as near. 

One might watch some time and yet not see the swallow 
lay the foundations of her house ; and, without seeing it done. 



206 SOME COMMON LAND- BIRDS, 

it would be hard to tell how she strikes so true a curve in set- 
ting her first course of mud pellets. She may not always use 
the same method, but I have seen her proceed as scientifically 
as a mason. Coming with her load of mud, she clings to the 
side of the barn with both feet and braces herself by her tail 
at such an angle as to begin at one of the upper '^ corners '^ of 
the nest. Then she deposits her mud in little dabs, not in 
large lumps as she lays it on later in the work, turning on her 
feet as a pivot and still keeping her tail fast applied to the 
wall, although it is spread quite out of shape by the turning 
of her body. She has struck out a circle, her feet the centre, 
her bill making the circumference ; and by working in this 
way, from the mud carried at that first load, she lays a line of 
pellets nearly half around the circumference of the intended 
nest. I do not know whether one bird is architect and master 
mason, and the other merely a hod-carrier, but it is interest- 
ing to see that they know the use of the compasses and that, 
rather than lose their line, they prefer to hang in a cramped 
position, sometimes almost head down. 

Rude as the work looks to us, these little masons are 
skilful builders. They must also be trained architects or 
their work would not stand the strain put upon it. What 
do they allow for the weight of their families ? How do 
they calculate the effect of the drought and sun on the 
dry mud ? What are their tests for the adhesiveness of 
their clay ? These are their masonic secrets, which they 
never divulge. 

Wherever you find a large colony of eaves-swallows, you 
will find conditions most favorable for mud-gathering. As 
such choice places are not abundant, and as the birds are 
social, large communities build together. Nearly always 
their nests are on the south side of a barn, grouped under the 



THE EAVES-SWALLOW, 207 

overhanging eaves. In one case I know of their building on 
the east, and in another on the north side of a barn, but this 
was because these were more sheltered. However, the north 
side is often occupied by a few pairs that have arrived too 
late to take up a house lot under the warmer eaves. Eather 
than be separated from their friends, they will build on an 
undesirable homestead.' 

Near my home is a barn that has, for many years, been the 
resort of a large colony of eaves-swallows. The owner had 
wisely protected them, and they visited him every year in great 
numbers. I imagine that several other colonies near there 
are made up of swallows of this original community forced to 
emigrate and seek a home elsewhere for lack of room here. In 
1898 there were seventy nests in the colony, two years before 
there were one hundred and eleven, and the year before there 
were one hundred and sixty -five. The last two years the num- 
bers decreased, and this year the whole colony has removed. 

In the winter of 1896, the English sparrows roosted all 
winter in these old swallows' nests and in the spring built 
in them, intending to raise their broods in nests they had 
not made. But when the swallows came, there was war. 
The swallows pulled down the nests, — eggs, young ones, and 
all, — and fought the sparrows till they were glad to escape 
with their lives. However, the north side of the building 
was not needed by the swallows that year, only a few 
pairs building there; and a pair of sparrows that re- 
sisted the onslaughts of these few came oft' victorious. They 
occupied an old swallow's nest, and a pair of swaUows lived 
next-door neighbor to them. The next year the sparrows again 
wintered in the barn and tried to occupy the ground for their 
nesting, but bag and baggage they were packed otf, and the 
swallows gloried in their complete possession. 



THE EAVES-SWALLOW : HOW SHE CHANGED HEE 
STYLE OF BUILDING. 

W^HEN the eaves-swallow first came about the homes of men, 
she built a different nest from that she builds to-day. Her 
home had been the sides of cliffs, not so smooth and straight 
as the sides of a barn, and not protected b}^ any overhanging 




Fig. 45. Nests of Eaves-Swallow. 

eaves. The roughness of the rock was an advantage to the 
bird, as it helped to support the nest, but the lack of cover was 
a disadvantage so great as to require some special provision ; 
for if the rain beat into the swallow's nest, it would drown the 
little ones, or soak the nest until it fell from the cliff. The 
mud nest of the swallow is water-tight, and rain cannot drip 
through, as it might through a nest of sticks. So, in her wild 
state, the eaves-swallow built a covered nest of a form commonly 
known as the ^^bottle-nosed nest." It was like a rudely mod- 
elled, round-bodied, short-necked flask of mud, stuck against 
the cliff by the bottom end, so that the bird could enter by the 
mouth of the flask. The neck of the bottle was a little passage- 

208 



THE EAVES-SWALLOW, 209 

way that led to a round and comfortable chamber. Though 
not pretty, this nest was very ingenious, and it answered per- 
fectly the swallow^s requirements. 

To-day the swallow makes a very different nest. It is a 
little pocket hung against the wall of the barn close under the 
eaves, partly supported by the side of the barn, partly by the 
roofing eaves, with no tunnel to enter it and no mud roof. 
Instead of being like a mud bottle, complete but for the bottom, 
which the rock supplied, the commonest form to-day resembles 
a quarter section of an orange peel stuck up beneath the rafters 
and entered by a hole scooped out at the top. 

Why has the swallow changed her architecture within fifty 
years ? All the older swallows built mud bottles even for 
years after they frequented barns. Your grandfather w^ill tell 
you that when he was a boy he saw nothing else. Yet you 
perhaps never saw one in your life. 

The swallow is a bird that learns much by experience. 
When she first began nesting against barns she had a great 
deal of trouble. A modern barn presents quite a different 
problem from a cliff of rock or a bank of hard clay. In the 
first place, it is much smoother, and it is much more nearly 
perpendicular, so it offers no natural support to the nest. We 
speak of perpendicular cliffs, but we rarely see one. The partial 
support that the slope of the cliff afforded was wanting in the 
barn. Then, the rock was always moist while the barn grew 
very dry in summer. The moisture that condensed upon the 
rock was just sufficient to keep the mud from growing too dry 
at the point of contact, so the nest hekl securely. Rut the dry 
boards robbed the nest of its natural moisture, and the rack- 
ing of summer tempests, or the jar of heavy carts across 
the barn floor, or the weight of the birds in the nest, would 
often send the whole household tumbling to the ground. 



210 SOME COMMON LAND-BIBBS. 

These calamities were so frequent that the swallows began 
to consider. They liked their new quarters too well to re- 
turn to nesting against cliffs. On the whole, men were good 
to them, flies were abundant, and it was warmer here than in 
the wilderness. So they remained ; and they took the sensible 
way of remedying their distresses. They began to remodel 
their nests. The first thing to do was to diminish the weight. 
They cut away the long, bottle-nosed entrance, and they 
altered the shape of the body of the nest. Its greatest length 
had been perpendicular to the side of the barn, so that gravity 
tended to drag it off; now they made the greatest length par- 
allel with the barn, thus exposing the structure less to the pull 
of gravity, and giving a greater surface of attachment. ISTo 
roof was needed now, for the eaves formed that. No en- 
trance passage was needed, and that was sacrificed. The 
eaves-swallow's nest had been perfectly adapted to its new 
conditions. 

And yet there arose circumstances wherein the new house 
was not an entire success. Once, on a trip in the Maine w^oods, 
we came to a farm ten miles from the nearest house and about 
thirty from the nearest town. It was kept up to raise hay 
for the lumbermen's horses in winter, and had a fine new barn, 
with the eaves finished out at right angles to the sides. Here 
a colony of swallows had built their nests, and to my surprise 
they were the old-fashioned, bottle-nosed structures that civil- 
ized swallows had abandoned forty years before. There are 
two possible explanations of this. Perhaps these backwoods 
swallows had never learned to alter their nests ; perhaps, 
as they were outside the limits of civilization, they held old- 
fogy notions of letting well enough alone, or perhaps they 
had some method in their work. 

This barn was painted, very smoothly finished, and much 



THE EAVES-SWALLOW. 211 

more difficult to build against than the ordinary rough struc- 
ture. The eaves, too, were at right angles. If we make some 
diagrams Ave can see what shape would be best fitted for these 
conditions and for the old style of barn. Under sloping, 
unfinished eaves the bottle nest does not fit well ; a pocket is 
better. But under square-finished eaves the flask-shaxjed nest, 
with slight modification, fits perfectly. When we recollect that 
mud does not stick to smooth paint very well, we shall see that 
under eaves of this sort the bottle nest gives a greater support- 
ing surface than the pocket. The nest is stronger for being 
of that shape. It is more work to make it, but the work pays 
in the end. Whether these swallows built their nests so 
because they were wise, or because they did not know any 
better, we cannot tell; but we shall see that they are still 
capable of making improvements and of adapting themselves 
to varying circumstances. 

The bottle-nosed nest is not entirely gone yet. There has 
been a revival of it in a colony near my home within a few 
years. When this colony grew so large that it found its favor- 
ite barn too small, there was a great demand for nesting-places 
among the swallows, and much ingenuity was shown in building 
on badly shaped house-lots. This is an old-fashioned barn with 
sloping rafters, unfinished beneath. The nests not only follow 
the side of the barn close beneath the eaves, but they extend 
down both sides of the rafters, and are placed in tiers one 
below the other, clinging partly to the wall and partly to the 
nests above. The lowest nests, that is, those nearest the edge 
of the eaves, are most exposed to the weather, and these are 
often built with bottle necks. The nests built first are not of 
this type because the birds take the most desirable places and 
build the nest requiring least work. But, later in the season, 
the bottle necks appear. 



212 SOME COMMON LAND-BIBBS, 

Once I saw a new shape of nest in a peculiar situation. 
In two or three colonies I have seen the same, but the location 
for it is so unusual that I can only regard it as a new departure 
in swallow architecture. The site chosen in these cases was 
just above the window frame of clapboarded buildings. The 
only support was a finish about an inch wide around the win- 
dow and what little additional support came from the outward 
slant of the clapboards. Two objects evidently must be held 
in view, — sufficiently large attachment surface to make the 
nest secure, and protection from the weather. The first was 
gained by making the nest nearly round and perhaps five 
inches in diameter, which gave it a wide circle for its point 
of support. The last was provided for by making it entirely 
covered, the entrance being by a small round hole near the 
centre. The nests looked like big mud pies, with holes in them, 
stuck against the sides of the houses. These colonies were 
small, but all nested in the same way. Sometimes these hemi- 
spherical nests were not attached to the side of the building, 
but were placed upon one another till they formed a great, 
shapeless mass of mud, full of holes ; for even in this swallow 
apartment-house, every nest still had its own private entrance. 

In the colony near my home I see scarcely two nests alike. 
Each one is fitted to its own place, or to its maker's whim, but 
there is a reason in it. Allowing for individual preferences, we 
find that they fall into certain well-marked types. There are 
the pocket nests, lying entirely under the eaves, the bottle-nosed 
nests placed near the edge of the eaves where the exposure is 
greater, and the hemispherical nests fully exposed on the face 
of a vertical surface. 

It has taken not more than fifty years for the birds to learn 
all this, and they still are learning. Men never began to learn 
so much about building houses in so short a time. 



KNIGHTS ANT) CASTLES. 



THE PURPLE MARTIN. 



As a fighter of unimpeachable courage, address, and bold- 
ness that never takes up the gauge of battle without reason, 
nor lays it down without honor, the purple martin stands peer- 
less. He is a knightly character, amiable, gentle, courteous, 
and wholly devoted to his lady wife whom he adores and 
caresses with sweet words; but very valiant toward any 
enemy, and, though unarmed in either bill or claws, both of 
which are small and weak, willing to engage in battle with 
any that affronts him. Like the knights of old he wears a 
steel-blue suit that shines like polished metal (but his 
lady's gown is white beneath) ; and, like the ancient knight, 
he prefers to live in a castle. 

I do not see them so often now, but in my childhood no 
carpenter in New England considered that he had finished a 
barn until he had built and placed upon its gable a martin 
box. These were sometimes elaborate affairs, and occasionally 
were so large that, instead of being perched above the peak of 
the barn on a short pole, they were erected in the middle of 
the farmyard upon a staff of their own as large as a small 
mast. In this case they spun a weather-vane upon their 
roofs, a horse, or a fish, or a gaudy cockerel that tried to run 
before the breeze, and could do nothing but turn round and 
round as it whiffled east or west. In this case, too, they were 
usually not snug little cottages, but pyramidal palaces of many 
stories, each with a wide balcony in front, and with many little 
round-topped doors opening into as many snug chambers, in 

213 



214 SOME COMMON LANT)-B1RT)S. 

each of which a pair of martins or blue-backed swallows 
nested. Indeed^ were it not for its inaccessibility, we should 
call this a swallow hotel instead of a swallow castle. 

How these martin houses came to be so generally built, 
especially in scattered farming sections, it is hard to say. 
Perhaps the early settlers had some real fondness for the 
pretty, social bird ; perhaps they were reminded in him of 
the old country over the sea ; but quite as likely, in their 
sensible, unsentimental way, they encouraged him as a protec- 
tor to their chickens. There was a time, with the woods 
creeping up to the edge of every farm, when crows and hawks 
were far bolder and more troublesome than to-day,. and when 
a colony of martins not only gave the chickens a cry of danger 
which they understood, and brought out the farmer with 
his gun, but joined battle themselves, and held the thief 
and assassin from his plundering by their furious assaults. 
The farmer of the old times was not particularly intelligent 
or sentimental or merciful ; he neither knew nor cared what a 
bird ate so long as it did not eat anything he could sell ; he was 
not the least grateful to the martin for destroying insects, and 
he tolerated no bird or beast that '^ wasn't some good.'' If he 
encouraged the martin, the chances are that he was merely 
retaining him as a sky watchman on his chickens. The lazy 
dog got no bone of charity in the old-time farm-house, and the 
martin paid his rent, no doubt, in hard work. But for some 
reason he had a house provided for him. 

It was always a glad sound in the spring to hear the martins 
coming back with loud chirps of joy as they saw at a distance 
and recognized their old home. " There it is ! Don't you see 
it ? Oh, hurr}^, hurry up ! " they called to each other, and 
swift and straight as a flight of cross-bow bolts they sped to 
it. All the rest of the day they would sit about their door- 



KNIGHTS AND CASTLES. 215 

ways, talking in loud, sweet voices, much above their usual key. 
Their excitement and joy were delightful to witness. 

In time they began to think of nest building. The old 
castles underwent a spring cleaning, and the furniture was 
thoroughly renovated. They are cleanly birds, and love sweet 
fresh beds and pleasant situations. Do you recollect how 
Shakespeare's Scottish general in the play of '^ Macbeth " men- 
tions this daintiness of the English martin — a bird which in 
habits more nearly resembles our eaves-swallows than our 

martin ? 

" This guest of summer, 

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, 

By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath 

Smells wooingly here ; no jutty, frieze, 

Nor coign of vantage, but this bird 

Hath made his pendant bed, and procreant cradle. 

Where they much breed and haunt ^ I have observed 

TJie air is delicate.^ ^ 

A wonderfully accurate observation, as you see, for that 
early day, and an excellent naturalist this Banquo, or 
Shakespeare. 

The martin is equally particular about her bed. Other 
swallows, except those building mud nests, gather their 
material on the wing, but the martin is deliberate and critical 
in her choice. Near our neighbor's martin house there once 
was a field of oats bounded by a high board fence that. 
by reason of a convenient knot-hole, was a fine place for 
spies and eaves-droppers to birds' private business. From 
behind it one could observe the martins. In the spring much 
of the oat-straw, still clean and bright, was left anu^ng the 
stubble, and to it the martins came for nesting-stuff. The 
knight and his lady always came together and dropped among 
the stubble. They would chat a little together softly, and 



216 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 

the female would look about for suitable straws, picking one 
or two long, heavy ones. She always made her own selection 
and carried her own load, though the male made every journey 
with her. Whether she discouraged male interference and 
wished to choose the furniture herself, or whether he escorted 
her to defend her, was never plain; but the males of that 
community, while kind, loving, and full of deference to 
their wishes, never carried any burden. The nest was finished 
with a few fresh feathers ; but how it was constructed was 
one of the secrets of the martin house that no boy ever 
was reckless enough to tr}^ to discover. 

There was a time when the martins nested in holes in trees, 
and in Southern California they still do that. In the South, 
gourds or calabashes were often hung where they could build in 
the hollow shell. And it seems probable that at some time they 
]nay have built a mud nest like the English martin and our 
eaves-swallow ; for there is a record that a pair that were 
troubled by water dripping from the eaves of their house and 
running under the nest, built a wall of nmd two inches wide 
and six long, weighing half a pound, as a water-guard, showing 
that they had not forgotten the mason^s trade. 

When men are friendly, the martin lives without fear. Cats 
cannot climb to his castle, hawks cannot overtake him on the 
wing, none have an enmity against him, and he bears ill will 
to none, with a single exception. One year, when he came 
back from the South, the martin found the muddy tracks of 
a strange bird on his verandas, his castle filled with rubbish, 
and a harsh-voiced ragamuffin in possession. The , English 
sparrow had moved in. And the English sparrow was invited 
to move out again with more speed than ceremony. How the 
angry martins flew at him, how they tossed every stick of his 
dirty furniture after him, and raged in their wrath against the 



KNIGHTS AND CASTLES. 217 

foreign interloper ! The sparrow was a bully and a tyrant over all 
the other birds, but he learned that the martins were his masters. 

However, when winter came and the air was frosty, the empty 
martin houses were too inviting to be resisted. Back the spar- 
rows went, and who would leave earlier in the spring than he 
had to ? They always forgot to leave until the day the martins 
came and they were whipped into ignominious retreat, their 
nests, eggs, and half-fledged young being pitched out after them. 

Nor were these bloodless encounters. They were battles 
royal to be sung by Homers .of the swallow tribe, each hero 
called by name ; for here was foughten field, beleaguered 
castle, the storming of a citadel, the rout of the entrenched 
where those unarmed and unprotected fought against stout 
and well-armed ruffians sheltered behind walls that could not 
be breached nor broken. The best and most knightly tales 
we can remember are scarcely too grand to be compared with 
this story of some little birds fighting for a toy house stuck 
up on a pole. I am wholly serious in admiring them. These 
battles lasted two or three days, as much, in proportion 
to the length of their lives, as two or three weeks would 
be to a man. We think that perhaps the pulls and peeks 
and pinches did not hurt, they being birds ; but these 
were battles to the utterance ; these birds killed each other. 
At one of the two martin houses nearest my home, one 
year two dead sparrows and two dead martins were found 
on the ground — perhaps a fifth of all those engaged in 
the fight; and at the other house I am told that more were 
killed, though not more in proportion to the contestants. 
Th« martins always were victorious. The only time when 
they were not completely so, was once when the colony was 
so small that they could occupy only tlie upper stories of the 
house, when they permitted the sparrows to build below them. 



218 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS, 

If you wish to know how dauntless is the spirit of the mar- 
tin let me tell you a little story. For many years a colony 
of martins have nested in a house on the gable of one of the 
tannery sheds in Brewer, Maine. The tannery itself, a large 
wooden structure, stood not more than thirty feet from the 
shed, but disconnected. In the year 1897, the martins returned 
on the twenty-second of April, fought their annual battle with 
the English sparrows, and settled down for a few days before 
they began to keep house. There were six or eight in the 
flock, which was never a large one. On the first day of May, 
just at dusk, the tannery caught fire. The martins were 
asleep for the night and must have been awakened by the 
shouts of men and by the glare and crackling of the fire. 
From the first the building was doomed, though the firemen 
made an effort to save it, and took their stand on the wind- 
ward side near by the martin house. But the heat there was 
terrible, and they were forced to fall back to a much greater 
distance. Not so with the martins, however; it was their 
home, and they would fight fire as they had fought sparrows. 
They never retreated from it, but wheeled round it with the 
fierce battle-love of war-eagles, drenched by the heavy streams 
of water so that they could hardly fly, scorched by the heat, 
but heeding neither fire nor water, the roar of the flames, the 
rending of timbers, the puffing of engines, nor the noise of the 
crowd. They had no nest nor eggs to protect, but they never 
thought of deserting the house they had fought for even if it 
cost them their lives. It is pleasant to know that their house 
was saved and that they bred and brought up their families 
there, and sang to them little home-made ballads of the great 
events of the year, the fire and the fight with sparrows, a sort 
of swallow-saga of exultation. 




M 
O 

- ^ 






SOME CAGED PINE GKOSBEAKS. 

The pine grosbeak comes down from the North only in 
winter, and seldom goes far south of New England ; but a 
little account of a pair that I held cax-)tive for a time, may 
give some hints of what can be learned from watching a 
caged bird. 

On those winters when food is scarce in the north the pine 
grosbeaks come south in large flocks to eat the berries of the 
mountain ash and black alder and the buds of maple, ash, and 
pine trees. Our first notice of their coming is hearing their 
wild, sweet whistle overhead, or seeing the ground strewn 
with the scales of leaf-buds, which they drop in feeding. 
They are the largest of our tamer winter birds, and look like 
a magnified sparrow, being about the size of a robin and more 
heavily built. Though they vary in color, from gray with a 
yellow rump and crown in the female and young, to a rosy red 
all over in the adult male, all ages and sexes have two broad 
white wing-bars which give an easy mark of identification. 

During the great flights of grosbeaks in 1897, four were 
brought me alive, and for a few hours all were put into one 
cage. In this interval one of them lost all the long quills 
from both wings, either by self-injury or by malice on the part 
of the others. The poor fellow could not fly, and his wings 
needed attention, so it was decided to keep him and one com- 
panion, a,nd to release the others. The birds were so near 
alike in color that the sexes could not be distinguished, but 
the gentlest tempered bird was selected to remain with this 
one, which, by his determined resistance, his fierce biting, and 
his loud snapping of the bill, was supposed to be a male. 

219 



220 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 

The pair were put in a large parrot cage with a swinging ring 
and lived there for six weeks, apparently happy and certainly 
well fed. They were very much pleased with the swinging 
ring, and became quite expert in leaping into it without losing 
their balance, although I often altered the position of the 
perches below, so they must strike the ring at a new and 
inconvenient angle. They swung in it singly and together, and 
at night always slept in it side by side — a forest habit, no 
doubt, of sleeping in a high place for safety. At first they 
slept soundly, with their heads tucked under their wings ; but 
frequent interruptions and night alarms caused them either to 
give up the habit entirely or to sleep much more lightly, for 
after a few days we never caught them napping. 

They ate apples, both fresh and the '^frozen-thawed^' from 
the trees, preferring the seeds, but eating a portion of the 
pulp also. The berries of the mountain ash they ate eagerly, 
rejecting most of the pulp. They loved the terminal buds of 
fir and maple twigs, and one day, when loose in the room, 
cropped their mistress's carnations and azaleas of every leaf- 
bud. Bird-seed formed their principal diet after the first two 
.weeks, and they showed a decided preference for canary seed. 
When fed the mixed hemp, rape, millet, and canary seed they 
appeared to reject all but the latter. At first they carefully 
shelled all their bird-seed, as they do their apple-seeds, and 
the cage was littered with the chaff ; but toward the end of 
their stay they seemed to learn that there was no necessity 
for this extra work, and few husks were found on the floor. 
When the fresh seed was first put in, the male usually stood 
in the middle of the seed-dish and m^ade his little wife watch 
him while he enjoyed himself. When their hunger was satis- 
fied, and they were eating for the fun of it, they would take 
several seeds in their mouths and hop up on the perch, where 



SOME CAGE J) PINE GROSBEAKS. 221 

they would chew each separately under the corner of their 
beaks. Gravel they ate eagerly and seemed to need fre- 
quently, but cuttle-bone they either did not desire or its use 
they could not understand. 

They were exceedingly particular about their water, drank 
much if it was good, but went thirsty rather than touch any 
that had stood in the cage over night. A bath was their great- 
est pleasure, and they threw the spray in such quantities as to 
wet the floor for three feet around the cage. But the bath 
must be fresh or they would go without it. They seemed to 
need it to keep their feathers trim. For the first week it was 
not offered them because we knew that in winter they could 
get no water to bathe in but dusted themselves in snow ; yet 
when given them regularly the bath produced an immediate 
improvement in their personal appearance. It was noteworthy 
what a difference life indoors made in their figures. They 
always look to be stout, puffy birds when wild, because they 
fluff out their feathers so as to make a loose, thick garment 
that holds the heat of the body ; but in captivity, needing no 
extra warmth, they laid their feathers flat, and became trim 
and elegant in figure, rather slenderer, it seemed to me, than 
most birds. 

The little grosbeaks became very tame. Though they would 
not willingly allow us to handle them, they Avere never afraid 
of any grown person. Of a child they were suspicious ; in the 
presence of the baby they showed positive alarm. The dog 
terrified them ; but the sight of a cat made them frantic, and 
often their cries of terror would draw one of us from another 
room in time to see a strange cat slink away from the low ve- 
randa windows. This excessive fright at a cat was at least 
partly explained by a narrow escape they had one day from a 
neighbor's pussy, which, having the liberty of the house, got 



222 SOME COMMON LAND-BIEDS. 

into the room where they were and with her claws tore the 
neck of the little female. But why should they have been 
afraid of the baby unless they classed four-footed beasts and 
creeping things together ? 

When first captured they had two notes, — their low, pleas- 
ant, conversational talk with each other, and their shrill alarm 
note, which they uttered when they saw flocks of their mates 
outside, a peculiar, piercing call, fit for the company of pine 
trees and a home in the ]N"orth. The last of February the male 
began to sing, a little whispering warble, sweet and ventrilo- 
quial, performed with the bill shut, and so hard to be located 
that when the birds were not more than a foot away it was 
difficult to tell which was the singer. Yet through a closed 
door the song could be heard, apparently just as loud. It is 
probable that the male would have improved in his singing in 
a few weeks, for his nearest relatives are good songsters, and 
he himself is not without a reputation. 

We were now able to be sure that the singer was a male, 
for, during the few weeks that the birds had been with us, one 
of them had been slowly, but unmistakably, turning red. Had 
this one been alone we should hardly have believed the change 
had occurred ; but, knowing that in the beginning both were 
alike, it was easy to see that the male's color had spread and 
deepened, had suffused his breast and crept down his back 
and brightened on his head and rump till these parts were no 
longer yellow, but a coppery red. And yet the change had 
come about without the loss of a single feather, except the 
primaries torn out in battle and two tail feathers broken by 
the cage. If new feathers grew, we did not see them, though 
the birds were often in our hands. Here was a case of '^ color- 
change without moult,'' a subject of great interest to scientists 
and not yet fully explained. 



SOME CAGED PINE GROSBEAKS. 223 

Another point worth notice was that both of them were right- 
handed. Whenever they clung to the bars of their cage, the 
right foot was put lowest down to bear the strain; and not only 
was this seen by constant observation to be their preference, 
but it was proved by the tails, which became very much worn 
upon the left side, where they rubbed against the bars. A lady 
who once kept a wild swamp sparrow captive, noticed that it 
always wet its food with its right foot and became lame in its 
left hip in consequence of the strain. Still, it is a matter of 
dispute whether animals are naturally right-handed. The 
parrot, it is said, is left-handed. Can you guess why ? Do 
you know whether it is so ? 

After a few days the little grosbeaks became very tame. 
They would allow no one to fondle them, and seemed to have 
no favorites among their attendants; but they were not at all 
timid, and could be given the liberty of the room in which 
they were kept for an hour or two every day. There were 
some hard knocks against the window-panes before they 
learned that glass is solid, although so clear, but they learned 
the lesson. Nor did they seem anxious for their liberty. 
After an hour or two of freedom they would go into their cage, 
or allow themselves to be caught in the hand. There was 
something so brave and trustful in the way they would look 
up with their clear hazel eyes, as if to say, ^' You don't mean 
to hurt us ; we are sure you don't.'' All this time the wing- 
({uills of the male had been growing, and he was now able to 
hy as well as ever. They were great pets, and we tried to 
make them happy. Our last attempt succeeded so well that it 
ends this story ; for there came a day in JMarcli when to dc^ 
them a pleasure they were taken out on the veranda for an 
airing. The bottom of the cage dropped out, and the male, 
wild for the freedom of the fresh air, leaped from his cage. 



224 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS, 

and with joyful cries flew to the top of the highest maple. 
His little mate did not attempt to follow him, but a gentle 
hand drew her out and made her feel the breeze beneath her 
wings, when she joined her mate, and neither ever came back 
to thank us for six weeks^ entertainment. 

This simple story contains nothing that any child might not 
observe ; but it shows that something may be learned even 
from caged birds, and it happens to illustrate three disputed 
points in science : whether wild birds sleep with their heads 
beneath their wings, whether they are naturally right-handed, 
and the color change without a moult. However, unless some 
accident, like that to our pine grosbeak, disables a bird, no wild 
bird should ever be kept in captivity unless it has perfect 
freedom, like a tame crow or blackbird. 




Fig. 48. — cuckoo. 



Facing page 225. 



THE BIRD INVISIBLE. 

THE CUCKOO. 

Who knows Cuckoo ? Listen ! Kovj-kow-kow-kovu you 
hear it in the apple tree, and kow-kow-kow-koifj off by the 
brookside, and up along the fringe of willows koiv-koir-kov) 
just as loud as before. 

The farmer's boy snaps together his jack-knife and sets off 
in the direction of the sound, grumbling that the old turkey is 
straying again, and the fox in the swamp will get him as he 
richly deserves. He never suspects that it is not the turkey 
at all but a cuckoo leading him off into the wet and oozy 
thickets. Perhaps he thought she shouted out her name 
as clearly as the little birds on the Swiss clocks that sing 
cuck-oo, cuck-oo, with the hours; perhaps he thought that 
any bird which the poets had praised so highly ought to be 
able to sing at least a little. This hoarse kow-kow-kow is 
nothing but a noise, and a very harsh one at that; so that 
it was an apt retort, as well as a witty one, when Shake- 
speare's heroine declared, — 

" He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo, 
By the had voice.^^ 

That is as good a way as any to recognize Cuckoo. Not only 
is her voice bad, except when crooning her soft coo-coo-coo, 
coo-coo, but it is unmistakable, and usually it is the only 
warning of her presence. She flits and calls and wanders 
from bush to tree, restless as a ghost and nearly as invisible, 
but proclaiming her whereabouts by her loud and frequent 
g 225 



226 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS, 

calling. But long shall you watch before you catch her 
crying out her kow-kow-koic. Let her come upon you lying 
in the grass and there is not a more silent bird anywhere 
than our shy, soft-mannered cuckoo. She will regard you 
shrinkingly a moment, and then fade away before your eyes. 
Xot a rustle of a leaf, not a stir of a twig^ not a flip of wings, 
but a ghostly vanishing. The slender, soft-colored, long-tailed 
bird that looked at you out of a clear hazel eye evaded you just 
at the moment w^hen you winked or glanced aside. Perhaps 
she merely hopped a little way and drew herself into some 
uncouth position, as long and slender as a dead apple-branch ; 
or perhaps her hazy colors hid her ; or perhaps she removed 
quite away from you, and you hear her kow-koiv-koiv from 
another leafy cover. 

You must not expect a closer acquaintance. Cuckoo is so 
shy, so quiet, so unwilling to be looked at, that unless you have 
a good glass or unlimited patience you must be satisfied with a 
glimpse of the soft brown back and the long, graduated tail. In 
time you will leaa-n her peculiar flight, her size, and her notes 
so well that even a half glimpse will be all you need to be cer- 
tain of her neighborhood. 

The two kinds of cuckoos which we have in this country look 
much alike, but they differ enough in their haunts, their habits, 
and their call notes to be quite readily distinguished, even 
without a sight of the black on the tail which marks the 
yellow-billed, and the red stripe around the eye which dis- 
tinguishes the black-billed cuckoo. In many parts of the 
country both species are found: in some but one is common, 
and the other rare or wanting altogether. Do you know 
whether both sorts live near you ? Which do you have ? How 
do you tell them apart ? If you have ever heard them called 
rain crow?, as they are in many places, perhaps you can tell 



THE BIBD TJVVISIBLE. 227 

US why they get the name. Do not hjok for the ?)lack-billed 
cuckoo west of the Rocky Mountains, nor for the yeUow-billed 
at the farthest northern limits of the country, for it is rare 
north of Massachusetts. In the farthest South there is some- 
times seen a third kind called the Mangrove cuckoo. When 
both kinds are found in the same region, the black-billed will 
be most commonly detected along wet lowlands, where a little 
growth of willows or alders borders a meadowy rivulet, while 
the yellow-billed cuckoo haunts the dry upland pastures, with 
scattered tufts of shrubby trees and near access to taller, 
thicker growth. 

Some day you may find Cuckoo's nest. Cuckoo is a poor 
nest builder, so you may easily guess whose house it is 
even if the owner is not home. ^^ As a nest builder,'^ says 
one observer, "the cuckoo is no genius, or if a genius he 
belongs to the impressionist school The nest is but a raft of 
sticks flung into the fork of a bough.'' If you find such a nest, 
— so shallow that the pale, blue-green eggs may easily be rolled 
out if the wind blows hard, — thrust into the side of a quickset 
hedge, or on the low bough of an evergreen, there is little doubt 
it is Cuckoo's. She usually further advertises herself by twist- 
ing a piece of rag into her structure, just as the red-eyed vireo 
always uses a piece of hornet's nest, and the Baltimore oriole 
twists strings into her woven pocket, and the great-crested fly- 
catcher wreathes a snakeskin about her nest rim. 

It is not wise to go too near Cuckoo's nest, nor to visit it 
often. She is the most suspicious of mothers, and often deserts 
her nest when she finds that it has been discovered. Instead, 
keep away from the pretty green eggs and the ugly black babies 
until some day you see Madam Cuckoo bringing caterpillars to 
what you think are little Plymouth Rock chickens. Then you 
may watch her if you will. iSTaturally you will bo rather aston- 



228 SOME COMMOX LAND-BIRDS. 

ished till you reflect that, in bird-land, to feed a young bird and 
to worry over it always means either an own child or an adopted 
one. These little short-tailed, mottled slate-and-white nestlings 
are certainly the own children of our elegant, graceful, long- 
tailed cuckoo. In time they will outgrow the difference and 
will look like her. 

There have been all kinds of stories about Cuckoo. Some 
say that she lays her eggs in other birds' nests, and some that 
she sucks eggs to make her voice clear. But we all know that 
she is as hoarse as a crow, and the best naturalists to-day, 
though they admit that they suspect her of egg-stealing, do 
not say that they ever caught her at it. All that I am sure 
of is that the other birds call her very bad names and try to 
drive her away. This looks suspicious, but proves nothing. 
Of the other charge there is rather more evidence, but even 
that is not wholly against Cuckoo. She makes her own nest and 
takes care of her own brood, as a rule. Occasionally she lays 
an egg in some other bird's nest, but so rarely that you are 
never likely to see it, or at most only in a. certain particular 
case. The black-billed cuckoo is rather prone to lay her 
eggs in her yellow-billed cousin's nest, and yellow-bill just 
as frequently returns the compliment. You can tell the eggs 
apart by their color. But who cares ? Aren't they all cuckoos ? 
And who cares if the cuckoo drops an egg now and then into 
the nest of some other bird ? A young cuckoo is as useful 
as any other young bird, and is no more trouble to his foster 
parents than their own birdlings. 

The most important fact about Cuckoo is that she is our 
greatest caterpillar hunter, and one of the best friends the 
fruit grower has. When the ugly tent caterpillars have 
twisted their webs about the ends of the apple-tree boughs, 
and are beginning to crawl dowa the t^unk in au endless 



THE BIRD INVISTBLE. 229 

procession^ she is there to make war upon them. When the 
canker-worms are cutting up the leaves till the trees are stark 
naked, then Cuckoo comes to fight them. She cannot eat them 
all, but she abates the nuisance even at its worst ; and more 
often than we know for she nips the devastation before it has 
grown great. The cuckoos are almost the only birds that will 
touch a hairy caterpillar, but they eat the hairy, spiny sorts by 
the hundreds at a meal. Being such a quiet, shy bird she is 
present oftener than we think for ; and, working without pay 
and without vacations, she is not a bad bird to keep around 
the farm and garden. 



A DEAD BEAT.i 



THE COW-BIKD. 



The habit of laying its eggs in other birds^ nests, which 
we remarked had been a few times observed in our American 
cuckoos, and which is the regular habit of the European 
cuckoo, has a name of its own. It is called parasitism. 

Parasite is an old Greek name for one who eats at another 
man's expense. Nowadays we call such a person a dead beat. 
Any animal that does not work for its own living, or that 
expects some other animal to bring up its young, is called 
a parasitic animal. Our cuckoos are only occasionally para- 
sitic, and then without doing any harm; but we have another 
group of birds that are dead beats of the lowest class. 

Little can be said in favor of our common cow-bird.^ E"ot 
only does he shirk the labor of building a nest, and of caring 
for his young, but the youngsters themselves are worthless 
fellows, and they always cause the death of all the young 
in the nest of their foster parents. So every cow-bird that 
you see is responsible for the death of four or five useful and 
pretty insectivorous birds, while he himself is good for nothing 
except eating a few bugs and a little weed-seed. The cow- 
bird is not only useless and morally disreputable, but he is 
actually criminal. 

^The facts concerning cow-birds are principally drawn from Major C. E. 
Bendire's "Life Histories of North American Birds"; the theory, except 
the comparison with cuckoos, from Sclater and Hudson's work on the " Birds 
of the Argentine Republic." 

2 The cuckoo is often called cow-bird, too, from its note ; but the true cow- 
bird is the cow-blackbird, shiny-eye, clodhopper, lazy bird, or buffalo bird of 
different localities. 

230 










Fig. 49.— cow-bird. 



Facing- pag-e 230. 



A DEAD BEAT. 231 

But even if we do not approve liirn, we may study him with 
profit. Naturalists agree that there is a great deal about his 
crooked ways that is not yet known or explained, and that the 
study of the cow-bird is one of the best fields open to observers. 

We need have no trouble in identifying him. He gets his 
name from his fondness for cattle, in whose company he is 
often seen, sometimes even riding on their backs to pick up 
the vermin on them. (But other birds, like the ani and 
Brewer's blackbird, also do the same.) His color is a good 
mark. The male, in spring, is a glossy black, with brown head 
and shoulders ; the female, dull brown. But his note is his 
most unmistakable characteristic. It has something of the 
reedy vibrancy of the other blackbirds, but more harshness ; 
and it is uttered with strange contortions of his body, with 
wings and tail quivering, head depressed, and throat swelled 
out — an effect wholly disproportioned to the harsh and brassy 
" chuck-see-e ^^ which he finally jerks out. A flock of these 
birds in a tree-top sounds like a congregation of rusty door= 
hinges. 

A curious fact about the cow-birds is that the males so 
outnumber the females that there are usually three or four to 
a single female. And instead of a large crop of old bachelors, 
she goes with all of them. Polyandry — having many husbands 
— this rare habit is called. Polygamy — that is, being married 
to many wives, like our barnyard cock — is the reverse of 
this. It is rather a curious observation that in a polygamous 
society the females have to work very hard ; but in a poly- 
androus society they do not work at all. Perhaps this may 
account for the lazy ways into which these birds have fallen. 

There are twelve species of these birds in tlie Xew World 
and none (except rarely one of them") is kncnvn to build a nest. 
though one South American species raises its own brood in 



232 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 

the nests built by other birds. The three species occurring 
in the limits of the United States neither build nor care for 
their young. This carelessness is the more notable because 
the blackbirds, as a rule, build very respectable nests, and 
their relatives, the orioles, are among the most famous weavers 
in the world. Why is it that a single genus has entirely given 
up the habit of nest building ? 

The female cow-bird lays an unending succession of eggs all 
summer long in any nest that comes handiest, or sometimes 
on the ground, as if not caring what became of them. Cow- 
birds' eggs have been found in the nests of ninety different 
species of iSTorth American birds, some in such strange places 
as the eaves-swallow's high-hung cradle, the hole of the red- 
headed woodpecker, and the long tunnel of the rock wren. 
Usually she selects the nests of some smaller bird, and those 
most commonly imposed upon are the phoebe, the song-spar- 
row, the towhee, the indigo bunting, the oven-bird, and the 
yellow-breasted chat. Often these contain several eggs of 
the cow-bird and none of their rightful owner's. As mau}^ as 
seven cow-bird's eggs have been found in one nest, though 
it is not usual to find more than one. When this hatches, it 
crowds out, smothers out, or starves out the young of the 
rightful o^vner, and becomes sole occupant. It is estimated 
that each female cow-bird ^ lays from eight to twelve eggs. 
These are usually laid singly in nests that should contain 
from four to five eggs of another bird. If all the cow-birds' 
eggs hatched, each female cow-bird would be responsible for 
starving from thirty to sixty little birds of our most benefi- 
cial sorts. Perhaps it is fortunate that the males are in excess 
of the females, or the destruction might be greater. 

1 Hudson estimates th3.t the female Argentine cow-bird lays from sixty to a 
hundred eggs in a season, and gives good reasons. 



A BEAT) BEAT. 233 

Luckily, accidents happen to the cow-bird's eggs. She lays 
many on the ground ; she lays some in deserted nests of the 
year before ; others she puts in new nests that are scarcely 
completed, and these are frequently deserted by the owners 
or another story is built over the intruding Qgg. But too 
many of them are received and tended. Once the foster 
mother adopts the big Qgg, her own brood is doomed. 
The new Qgg gets more than its share of warmth; it has 
wonderful vitality; it hatches very quickly, and its thick 
shell protects it from accident, for the cow-bird has a habit 
of breaking the eggs in the nests she visits, even her own if 
she finds there one laid previously. It is not known whether 
she pricks them with her beak or with her claws, but each one 
is punctured so that it will not hatch. How she does it, young 
naturalists may attempt to discover. 

The instance of that South American cow-bird, which takes 
care of its young in a nest built by other birds, indicates that 
at some remote period the others probably did the same. It 
has been suggested that several females might have been in 
the habit of laying in the same nest to avoid the work of 
building; and that thus they got into the habit of turning 
over their eggs to each other's care, each expecting some other 
bird to do her work for her, until at last in order to hatch any 
young they were obliged to lay in the nests of unrelated 
species that were better mothers. Whether laziness or in- 
ability to build good nests be the cause of the parasitic habit 
we cannot determine, but it is noteworthy that the cuckoos, 
the only other North American birds that are much inclined 
to similar habits, are poor builders. 

But there is another theory, more ingenious and perhaps 
equally true. In South America many birds buikl larofe, 
domed nests, and these })rove so attractive that other species 



234 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS, 

seek them to nest in just as our martins and sparrows and wrens 
hunt for martin houses. In time, some of them have lost the 
art of building nests for themselves, or else rarely practise it. 
Among these birds is the honest cow-bird. She can build her 
own nest and sometimes does do it, but she prefers to fight 
for one of these fine, domed dwellings. She usually gets it, 
and no sooner has she taken possession than she makes a 
window in the side to let the light in. Here is a bird that 
can make an open nest, but that prefers to live in a covered 
nest. 

Now, it is observed that the other species of cow-birds of 
South America, which are never known to build for themselves, 
are greatly attracted to these domed nests. They examine 
them, linger about them, seem inclined to enter, but are afraid 
to do so, and after a half day's debating between their desire 
to go in and their fear of the dark, they back away reluctantly. 
If the inside is light, they will lay in it, but they will not 
make a hole to let in the light as the honest cow-birds do. A 
lost instinct seems to prompt them to enter holes, indicating 
that they once bred in such places, or else built a partially 
covered nest. 

Among these South American cow-birds we observe three 
stages in acquiring parasitic habits. The bay-winged cow-bird 
often makes its own nest and brings up its own young, though 
it more commonly uses the empty nests of other birds ; the 
screaming cow-bird is parasitic on the bay-winged, and more 
rarely on other birds ; the Argentine cow-bird is parasitic on 
many other birds but not on other cow-birds. One takes an 
empty nest to avoid the work of building ; one lays her eggs 
in her cousin's nest to escape the care of her young; one goes 
entirely out of the family and imposes upon birds that are not 
related. 



A DEAD BEAT, 235 

Among the cuckoos, the first stage of borrowing a nest seems 
not to have been observed ; but the second, of laying in the 
nests of other birds of the same family, is not infrequent 
among the American cuckoos ; and the third, of complete jjara- 
sitism, though rare among the American, is habitual in the 
European cuckoo, which neither builds its nest nor cares for 
its eggs. It would seem that parasitism must be a habit which 
has been increasing among these birds, and that our American 
cuckoos are yet in the earlier stages, while our cow-bird and 
the European cuckoo have passed on to the extreme form of 
the habit. But habits are not acquired by a perfectly regular 
and imperceptible advance. There are always some birds that 
are ahead of the rest and some that are behind in learning the 
new ways ; even after the habit has become a settled one, there 
are survivals of the older habit or reversions to it, just as in 
forming a new habit there are anticipations of it by the most 
progressive birds. Who knows then but some day sharp eyes 
may yet discover an old-fashioned cow-bird, not yet educated 
up to this end-of-the-century new-birdism, feeding her young 
in a nest of her own building ; or perhaps may be able to prove 
that our cuckoos have as yet just begun their career of para- 
sitism, and, like the cow-bird, are degenerating into bird- 
hoboes, and gradually but surely becoming bad bird-citizens. 



THE IS^EST IN THE PASTURE SPEUCE. 

THE LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE. 

Out in the half -cleared New England pasture, where check- 
erberry leaves glisten on the hillocks, and, in spring, rhodora 
grows among the pools in the hollows, stands the old pasture 
spruce, — not tall and stately like its forest brothers, but a 
sturdy, knotty tree that reaches its long arms out to shelter 
the sheep and cattle on hot August noons. In a thousand 
New England pastures stand just such spruce trees, among 
the clumps of bayberry and huckleberry bushes. In many 
of them a gray-and-w^hite bird must have her nest, as she does 
in this. Not many birds care for such an exposed place, 
which must seem like living on a lighthouse far out from 
land; but this bird seems to prefer that isolation. In eight 
nests of which I have records near my old Maine home, six 
were found in pasture spruces, one in a birch tree, and one in 
an apple tree, all isolated trees. 

The nest was always placed upon the south side of the 
tree, saddled upon the broad, flat palm of an extended spruce 
bough at about ten feet from the ground, and built with so 
much superfluous material that one wonders at the bird's 
patience in collecting it. An old one which I have just 
weighed, weighs a quarter of a pound. If you wish to see 
how much work it was to make it, tr}^ to pick up that weight 
of hairs, dry grasses, and tiny sticks. 

But you can by no means judge the work she puts out 
upon her nest until you work as she does, carrying them 

236 




Fig. no. — shrike. 



cinjr pag-e 280. 



THE NEST TN THE PASTURE SPRUCE, 237 

singly from one rod, or five, to a quarter of a rnile from 
the spot where she finds them. Birds often carry their nest- 
ing-stuff very long distances. I know some crows that used 
to line their nests with cow's hair which they must have 
collected fully a mile from the nest. This was evident because 
we could see that the hair was such as is scraped from hides 
at the vats of tanneries ; it was in mats that had been 
soaked ; and the only tannery was a full mile away. 

Let us examine the nest in the spruce tree. First there is 
a coarse platform of twigs of birch and juniper, intermingled 
with tough spruce roots. These must have been pulled by 
great effort out of the hard, stony ground. It would be as 
easy for you to jerk up a five-year-old apple tree, and the brrd 
must have gone to work very much as you would have done 
with the apple tree, first separating each of the side roots, so 
that only the largest one was left to be pulled off by main 
strength. There are a number of large roots, more dead 
twigs, much cedar bark, moss, fine roots, string, and rope yarn 
in the outer and coarser part of the nest, each with a history 
when we think where the nest came from. 

The cedar bark was stripped from the rail fence surround- 
ing the pasture. I suspect that the rhodora lent these fine 
rootlets, and these dried, smooth suckers look to me like dried 
witch-grass stems. (Do not call them 7'oots ; the witch-grass 
spreads by an underground stem.) Here is the gray moss that 
grows on ledges. The nearest boulder, where this could be 
obtained, is twenty rods away from the spruce tree. Here is 
string — hard-twisted cord, in pieces eight inches and a foot 
long, as if bitten into convenient lengths by the graybird : 
loose-twisted wicking, which could be used in bulk : fine 
thread; materials that I cannot identify: rope-yarn — un- 
twisted; cotton-waste from the railroad track; sheep's wool. 



238 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS, 

or woollen waste ; and store twine, — so much of the last that 
it would seem she must have begged it of the butcher's boy 
before he got to the door. Probably she did pick it up early 
mornings in the yards of houses near by, long before men 
were stirring. 

Did you ever think that some bird's sharp eye was on 
the lookout for ever}^ bit of twine which you throw away ? 
We begin to appreciate how much our habit of using strings 
freely means to the birds when Ave notice the use they make 
of threads, cords, and twines. Time and labor are saved to 
the birds when men are generous with their strings ; and we 
can make a variety of interesting and simple observations by 
noting what happens when a good supply of string is at their 
disposal. A veranda roof is a good place to put them if you 
spend much time upstairs. Shut the blinds and peep through 
the cracks to see what kinds of birds come for string. Vary 
the experiment by putting out weak strings, like worsted, and 
strong ones, like twine, to see whether the strength of the 
string is of au}^ importance to them. Place colored strings 
with the white ones, and notice whether they prefer or avoid 
the colored ones. Perhaps you may be able to tell whether it 
is lack of an eye for color or fear of betraying their nests that 
makes them avoid the colors ; and perhaps you will find some 
species preferring the colors when a choice is given them. 
Try them with long strings and short, to see whether they 
judge their material before they carry it off. Fasten some of 
the strings in various ways to see whether they notice the dif- 
ference between those that are free and those that are tied, 
and how much ingenuity they have in clearing them of 
obstructions. The more systematic and careful you are in 
making such experiments the more you will see that is worth 
notice. Random experiments amount to very little. When 



THE NEST IN THE PASTURE SPRUCE, 239 

you wish to establish one fact, make your arrangements so 
that your experiment or series of experiments will clearly 
show what you wish to be proved. This string experiment is 
the simplest possible, but it is worth trying. 

But we are far enough away from our nest in the sjjruce 
tree. The outer structure we have already analyzed. Inside 
this is a layer of hair. There is sheep's wool among it, 
though I do not know of a sheep in the neighborhood. These 
white horse hairs certainly came from the tail of old Dobbin, 
though Dobbin and the Deacon, his master, live half a mile 
away. If there is any other white horse in that vicinity, the 
gray bird knows her neighbors better than I do. This soft 
white hair, still lying in little parcels just as the industrious 
bird collected it in her beak, I recognize as the winter coat of 
the Squire's cow which must have been gathered hair by hair 
in such places as the cow was wont to rub her sides while she 
waited for spring to come. Thus three kinds of animals have 
furnished the second layer of the graybird's nest. 

But there is still a third, softer than any of the others. 
The widow's hens furnished that, yet her stock is not fairly 
represented. Here are feathers and feathers, but all of two 
sorts, — either the white hackles from the neck of some wiiite 
Cochin cock, or the soft, mottled feathers of Plymouth Eock 
fowls. There are no gaudy bronze and red plumes from the 
ruffs of strutting barnyard lords ; none of the brown feathers 
of the Polish, nor black ones from the Spanish fowl. If T 
did not know better I should think the widow and her neigh- 
bors raised little else but Plymouth Rocks. On the contrary, 
they were not abundant in this neighborhood when this 
nest was made. If I had not seen other nests, I shouUl 
think the graybird had '^happened" to take these dull, 
spotted feathers so near her own color. But every nest 



240 SOME C0MM6N LAND-BIRDS, 

I ever saw contains more of Plymouth. Eock or of plain 
white feathers than of every other kind taken together, 
and observers from other localities near by note the same. 
Evidently, in this section, the bird chooses these dull feathers, 
hunts till she finds them, and then arranges them in a curious 
manner that well bears out the assertion that her choice is 
reasonable. 

At first sight you would call this a rough nest. Any bird, 
you would think, would know better than to leave feathers 
sticking up all around her nest in this unfinished way. But 
more careful observation will show you that the feathers are 
sticking up only around the rim of the nest ; that they are put 
in carefully so that the tips curve inward over the hollow of 
the nest. Fifteen Plymouth Eock hen's feathers arch over 
this deep warm nest, and shade the mother as she sits upon it. 

Do you recollect that the bird built in a lone tree in an open 
pasture, where she was much exposed to enemies ? There is 
a good reason why she should wish to hide herself while on 
her nest, and why she chose dull, mottled feathers that har- 
monize with the color of her back and of the nest, for a 
screen. 

It is true that I have not told you the name of the graybird. 
There is a prejudice against the name of shrike, and when a 
bird has such an unattractive title as '' loggerhead shrike,'' it is 
hard for her to get justice done. But really, she is not at all 
a bad bird, and she does know how to make the softest, warm- 
est nest you ever saw. In the South and West she does not 
build in a spruce tree nor use so many feathers ; there you 
would best look for her in some thorny thicket. 

We have two kinds of shrikes, — the great northern, or 
winter shrike, and the loggerhead, or summer shrike. The 
former is seen only in the more northern states, and there 



THE NEST IN THE PASTURE SPRUCE. 241 

only in winter; the latter, with its subsx^ecies, is found in 
summer all over the United States, and in the more southern 
portions is the only shrike ever seen. The two look so much 
alike when alive that the surest way of identifying them is by 
the season when they are seen. In Maine the great northern 
shrike arrives about the first of October and leaves about the 
first of March, while the loggerhead arrives from the South 
just in time to relieve him, and stays till the great northern 
returns in the fall. Farther south, the northern bird spends a 
shorter time and the southern bird a longer time on the field. 
The only one known to nest in the United States is the logger- 
head, with its subspecies, the Calif ornian and the white-rumped 
shrikes. Both species are medium-sized birds, gray above and 
white below, with black wings and tail, marked with white, 
and a black stripe across the forehead, extending down the 
side of the head. Young birds lack the black markings and 
are of a brownish color. Shrikes may be easily identified by 
their color and by their habits, especially by their choice of 
the topmost branches of a lone tree or of a fence-post, and by 
their flying as if intending to alight below their perch and 
suddenly rising to it with a bound. 



HOW THE SHRIKE HUNTS. 

Eyeky boy considers the shrikes fair game. He may pop 
pistols and snap slingshots at them in Yirtuous indignation, 
because they are so cruel to the little birds. It is generally 
believed that they love to torture little birds, and have a habit 
of hanging them all alive on thorns, and that they are barbar- 
ously cruel. 

Is it not true that the reason why we think the shrike 
a bad fellow is not so much because we pity the little 
birds, as because we feel that if he were only big enough he 
would like to hang us up on hooks too ? We make a bug-a-boo 
out of the shrike when really he is not a particle more cruel 
than the crow or the blackbird, not to mention the hawks and 
owls. 

Let us do him justice. He does not torture his victims, 
but kills them speedily by pecks on the head, or by throttling 
them ; he does not hang them up alive ; and though he kills 
more than he needs, he does not seem to do it wantonly, but 
tidily hangs up the carcass where he can find it some day 
when he needs food. 

Here is a picture of an English sparrow killed and hung up 
by a great northern shrike in the fork of an alder twig, 
drawn from nature so that you may be sure it is correct. 
It is an honest witness to the fact that the sparrow was dead 
when dropped into the fork of the branch. Had a spark of 
life remained, he must have fluttered out of such a wide-angled 
crotch of a tree which has no thorns or side limbs to hold the 

242 



HOW THE SHRIKE HUNTS. 



243 



bird. And though very often the shrike hangs up its prey 
by driving a sharp thorn through its neck, the bird must be 
dead before this is done, because the shrike has neither the 

strength nor the sharp claws needed 

to carry a struggling and frantic 

bird from a quarter to half as heavy 

as himself. It is his custom either 

to peck his victim on the head, or 

-. to throttle it by pinching its throat, 

but not to torture it. Hanging it 

up is a mere matter 

of convenience, and 

shows that the shrike 

has forethought for 

the rainy day that is 

coming, when dinner 

will not be so easily obtained. If 

any young observer finds where the 

shrike has left his meat, he should 

leave it and watch it occasionally, 

to see whether the bird ever comes 

back for it. 

Since the shrike has a bad name, 
let us see what harm it does. In 
winter the great northern shrike has 
a very limited bill of fare. A few 
chickadees, nuthatches, downy wood- 
peckers, red - polls, crossbills, pine 
linnets, snow buntings, and tree-spar- 
rows, with possibly, now and then, 
a pine grosbeak are all the birds, 
except the English sparrow, small enough for him to master. 




Fig. 51, Sparrow hung up 
BY Shrike. 



244 SOMJE COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 

and, except the first three, none of these are beneficial. Like 
the shrike, the others are winter emigrants from the North 
and do no helpful work while they are here. 

Indeed, the shrike is one of our most useful birds, for 
he is a champion sparrow killer. We have no bird so 
utterly depraved, destructive, and altogether odious as the 
English sparrow. Aside from all the other harm he does, he 
is estimated to eat or destroy not less than five million dollars' 
worth of grain and fruits yearly. Any one who makes one 
English sparrow live where there were two before does more 
good than the man in the proverb who set himself to raising 
grass. We ought to thank any bird that devotes his time to 
thinning the ranks of this pest. 

It has long been well known that the great northern shrike, 
though a shy bird, naturally averse to the society of man and 
even of his own kind, is a regular visitor to the parks 
of great cities and to town and city gardens where sparrows 
resort. Though not visible every day and all the time, like 
some birds, he is much more commonly seen there than in 
the unsettled country. 

In my own neighborhood he first became conspicuous a 
few years after the English sparrow arrived, and his entrance 
into city life in this vicinity seems to have dated from 
about that time. Though never an abundant bird, he has 
become a regular instead of a rare winter visitor, and is still 
rare, so far as my experience goes, a few miles from town. 
One city church surrounded with hedges and trees, the favor- 
ite resort of sparrows, is his headquarters also; and it is not 
uncommon while passing the place, to see him make a dash 
among them and drive them screaming in all directions. How- 
ever, it was only recently that I realized that he had reduced 
sparrow-hunting to a science. 



HOW THE SHRIKE HUNTS, 245 

At nightfall of a very cold day, as I went out for a walk, I 
noticed that the sparrows had gone to bed. It was not dark, 
for a mellow golden light filled the west ; but, on account of 
the cold,the birds had gone to roost early and sat quietly muffled 
in their feathers. Half a mile farther on, as I paused on the top 
of a hill to look at the after-glow in the west, I saw a bird 
flying directly toward me with the greatest speed and a jjer- 
fectly true course. He must have come from the city across 
the river, a half mile away, and the manner of his flight 
showed that he knew whither he was bound. 

As he whizzed past, I saw his black, gray, and white 
livery, and marked his peculiar wing-beat, like the stroke of a 
strong rower, who rests on his oars a moment between each 
pull. It was a great northern shrike. He was heading 
straight for a clump of thick cedars a hundred feet beyond. 
As he approached he scaled downward, and, when near the 
ground, gave the peculiar upward bound that marks the 
shrike's manner of alighting. For a moment all was still. 
Perhaps ten seconds or more passed without a stir in the 
cedars. Then there rose a clamor of sparrows and out buzzed 
a flock of them while the shrike in pursuit singled out one 
of them, and the chase began. 

The sparrow did his best, but he made a mistake, heading 
for the open and flying a straight course. The shrike was 
far the better bird on the wing, and it was only a ques- 
tion of time what the end would be. A house prevented 
my witnessing the actual capture, and I was rather glad 
that I did not see it, even if it was one sparrow less. But 
I had learned something new to me about the shrike : that 
he has hunting-grounds at some distance from his head- 
quarters ; that he visits them probably with some regularity ; 
that he knew there would be sparrows in this place at 



246 



SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 



this time of night ; and that he hunted after other birds 
were abed to take advantage of their habits. When he 
arrived he did not dash in and give the alarm at once, but 
entered quietly and low down where he could not be so 
easily seen, waiting there till he had located his victims, 
when he charged at them in such a way as to drive them 
out into the open rather than through another clump of 




Fig. 52. Centipede Impaled by Shrike. 



cedars close at hand. Evidently he knew all about sparrow- 
hunting, and I suspect that this was his regular night beat. 

There is a record of a shrike that killed two sparrows, and, 
holding one in each foot, tried to pursue a third. It has been 
somewhat disputed whether the shrike carries his prey in his 
feet or in his bill, but young naturalists can easily settle that 
for themselves by watching the bird. Besides, how do birds 
always carry heavy weights ? and what reasons are there that 



HOW THE SHTilEE HUNTS. 247 

they must carry heavy objects differently than they might carry 
light ones ? 

The character of the loggerhead shrike, our summer visitor, 
seems to me scarcely to need much defence. If any questions 
are asked, here is the picture of a mesquite branch which a 
friend of mine brought me from Arizona as a sample of the 
work of the white-rumped shrike. He said he had several 
others, all with centipedes on them. A bird that spends 
its time sticking centipedes on thorns, and killing Jerusalem 
crickets, is worthy of encouragement. The Southern planter 
will tell you that in his fields the shrikes kill mice like 
cats ; and you yourself may find the beetles and grasshoppers 
which she has caught, but not eaten, stuck upon the sharp spurs 
of wire fences and behind slivers in the fence-rails. In Florida, 
it is reported that they come day after day bringing their 
grasshoppers and beetles to eat them on some favorite spot, 
as a tree stump, and that one of their dining tables may be 
known by the quantity of hard wing shards and legs of insects 
dropped about it. So far as I know, the loggerhead shrike is 
largely an insect eater. It may be that she eats little birds 
now and then, and I would not invite her to build too near my 
favorite chipping sparrows ; but her bird neighbors give her a 
good name, and sit fearlessly in her spruce tree, while they 
cry out in wrath if a crow, or a blackbird, or a cuckoo, or a 
bluejay, comes too near their nests. 



HOW THE ROBIN GETS HIS WORM. 

The robin is the one bird among those which most frequent 
our lawns and gardens that makes a practice of eating earth- 
worms. One of our most familiar sights is to see him go trot- 
ting over the lawn^ apparently stamping harder than he needs 
to as he comes down heavily on his hind toes — '^ heels/^ I had 
almost said, forgetting for a moment where a bird's heel is — 
as if to wake up the worms, then cocking his black head to listen 
as they try to crawl back into their burrows. How shrewd he 
looks ! How capable he is ! How quick in his actions ! He 
has that worm by the head in an instant. When the worm 
feels Robin's sharp bill, he tries to crawl back into his hole, 
and if he is large there is a pretty little tug-of-war to be wit- 
nessed on the lawn ; but bold Robin sags back and pulls so well 
that it is seldom a worm escapes him when once fairly nipped. 

You may have noticed that Robin is oftenest seen on the 
lawn in wet weather. W^hen it has been fair for some days 
he is not there to pull worms. The reason of this is not hard 
to seek. 

You may remember some morning having seen the neat 
walks of your garden pierced with little round holes, sur- 
rounded by piles of dirt, and of being told that these were ^^ worm 
casts,'' and that seeing them was always a sign of rain. The 
earthworm is fond of moisture; he must have it. In dry 
weather he gets it by burrowing deep, where the ground is still 
cool and damp ; but in wet weather he comes to the surface 
and perhaps crawls about on the top of the ground. We say 
sometimes, when we see the angleworms on the concrete walks 

248 



now THE ROBIN GETS TfIS WORM. 2i9 



of a town after a rain, that they ^^ rained down.'' The truth 
is that they were wandering about the surface, enjoying 
the moisture, and were drowned or crushed before they could 
get back. 

The robin knows very well this point in the natural history of 
earthworms, and that rainy weather is the time to look for 
them. His spirits rise with the dampness, and he becomes 
more active, carolling his loud rain-song, gathering mud for 
his nest, digging worms, and feeling unusually chirk and 
happy just when other birds look depressed. If you wish to 
see what a robin knows about angleworms, set the lawn- 
sprinkler out some bright day. If Robin is as hungry for 
worms as usual, he will be there, hopping and digging right 
under the shower of drops. Of course he is getting his back 
wet when he might easily keep dry, but he knows that where 
the ground is wettest the earthw^orms will come nearest the 
surface. 

I must confess that I never watched a robin carefully to see 
how he ate his worm, but the narrative is so interesting that 
I will quote from Mr. Daniel E. Owen's account of a pet her- 
mit thrush, a description of the way the thrush ate its worms. 
As the robin is a thrush, perhaps the description may serve for 
both. '^ The bird began by worrying the w^orm, much as a cat 
does a mouse, nipping, pecking, and slatting its victim vio- 
lently. The attack seemed to be directed mainly at the ex- 
tremities of the worm. Thus, in one case, the head of the 
worm was pecked ten times, the tail seventeen times, and the 
middle twice. The worm, of course, struggled vigorously at 
first ; but after a time lost, in a measure, the power of motion. 
Now and then the bird's beak would miss the worm, or wouUl 
slip off. At such times the mandibles came together with an 
audible snap, conveying a suggestion of the torturing pinches 



250 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS, 

to which the unfortunate worm was being subjected. The 
pommelling and nipping having gone on for from one and a 
half to three and a half minutes, the thrush would next essay- 
to swallow the worm, beginning, almost invariably, at the tail. 
In the case of a big worm, the process of swallowing was dis- 
tressingly prolonged by the efforts of the worm to escape, in 
which it often succeeded so far as to crawl out of the bird's 
mouth almost as fast as it was drawn in. The fact that the 
thrush swallowed its worms tail first, gains something in inter- 
est when the structure of the earthworm is taken into account. 
As is well known, the earthworm's body consists of from one 
hundred to two hundred rings or segments. Every segment, 
except the anterior two or three and the tail, affords insertion 
to four groups of short bristles, to which muscles are attached 
and by means of which the worm progresses. Now a person 
would suppose that the presence of several hundred little bris- 
tles, all pointing the wrong way, would interfere with easy and 
pleasurable deglutition ; and, inasmuch as a worm normally 
crawls ahead and not back, I expected to see my thrush swal- 
low worms head first, when it is to be presumed the bristles 
in question would not retard the process. As a matter of fact, 
the contrary method was followed.'' 

This hermit thrush always ate at least half its own weight 
of raw beef a day, or a much greater amount of worms, which 
were not so hearty. Careful experiments indicated that it 
would have eaten its own weight of worms in three or four 
hours. How hard it would be to feed children if they ate in 
proportion ! The thrush had a keen sense of taste and would 
refuse worms that came from a dirty place, '' making a great 
splutter" or '^ rejecting them with every symptom of nausea 
and abhorrence, wiping its bill on the nearest object which 
was, generally, my hand." Though taken captive when very 



HOW THE ROBIN GETS HIS WORM. 251 

young, the bird showed an instinct for hunting worms, and 
would alight on its master's table and jjull over all the sheets 
of paper, just as it would have searched beneath the dead 
leaves in its home in the woods. 

What has most interested me in Robin's worm-hunting is the 
way he gets his worms in early spring. When he first comes 
in the spring to his far Northern home in Maine he arrives 
long before the snow is gone. In ordinary years he reaches 
here by the middle of March, when it is spring by the almanac. 
At that season, even in the best of years, every fence carries a 
great snow-drift along its northern side, which often does not 
melt till the middle of April. Looking from my window to- 
day, the thirteenth of April, 1898, I can see snow-drifts in 
gardens where peas are already planted. When the robins 
first come, one w^ould expect to see them avoid this snow and 
seek the open fields and gardens ; but 1 most frequently find 
them, often in small flocks, hopping along the edges of the 
drifts, eating food that they find there. In any field I would 
expect to find most robins on the south side, which is of 
course the one where the snow lies, as it is shaded by the 
fence, or stone wall, or row of trees that bounds the field and 
shuts off the southern sun. Whatever you may think, the 
northern side of a field will dry sooner than the southern side, 
the northern sidewalk will dry sooner than the southern one, 
if the field have a fence and the sidewalk have houses on 
the southern edge. 

To settle why the robins followed the drifts was a matter 
that required some thinking. What was the advantage to 
them? 

I have just been out and examined the drifts I spoke 
of, to be sure that no one can think me mistaken in assign- 
ing a reason. These drifts are made up of granulated icy 



252 SOME COMMON LAND-BIBDS. 

snow, resting upon a bed of solid ice formed by their settling 
and packing. On the southern side, next the high fence, the 
slope of the drift is steep and but little ice shows at the foot — 
an inch or two perhaps ; on the northern side of the drift, where 
the sun strikes soonest as it looks down over the fence, the slope 
is more gradual and a rim of ice four or live inches wide bor- 
ders the drift. Everybody knows that in March there is always 
a muddy line about a snow-drift that he must leap across. 
This bank has soaked a line from one to three feet wide, ac- 
cording to the slope of the soil, so that the mud is from three 
inches deep to one inch deep around the snow-bank, according 
to the amount of water that has been absorbed. The nar- 
rower the width of the muddy line, the deeper the mud at 
that point. 

Here we come to the point that appeals to the robin. Food 
is hard to get in March. Every night the fields freeze up to 
the edge of the drift, and the next day they are dry. But as 
the snow melts, the waste water thaws the ground and leaves 
a muddy line in the track by which it retreats, a soft space 
which can be worked over easily by the birds, who gather to 
pick out seeds and torpid insects or such bits of food as they 
can find a little beneath the surface. In this way the robin 
takes advantage of the forces of nature just as a man would, 
and turns even ice and snow to good account. 

Wise robin ! coming early, with a song, with a brave dis- 
regard for winter only partly vanquished, and a good heart 
to fare hard if need be, spring in the North would lack its 
best delight if it missed your annual return. 



^^THE STEANGE THINGS BIEDS DO AND THE 
STEANGE THINGS THEY SAY.'' 

There is a delightful uncertainty of expectation in study- 
ing birds. You never can be sure but the bird you know so 
well will next moment do something so unexjjected that you 
will feel that no one else in all the world has seen such a 
strange, true thing. 

Most birds can swim a little under compulsion. The pecto- 
ral sandpiper voluntarily alights on the ocean. The wounded 
stilt swims J the wounded least sandpiper dives, and even a 
heron will swim if it falls into the water ; yet none of these 
are swimming birds by habit. 

And often, too, a bird will suddenly change its habits, as 
when swallows alight in trees, and when domestic pigeons 
alight in bushes to eat berries, or when one builds its nest 
in a tree, as I have known one to do ; or, when such exclusively 
ground birds as the willet, the yellow-legs plover, the whistling 
plover, the Wilson's snipe and other waders, during their breed- 
ing season, perch by preference on the branches of trees. But 
what shall we say when a liaAvk eats choke cherries ; when 
owls hunt by day, and bitterns hunt by night ; when king- 
fishers eat insects, and chickadees eat meat, and sea-gulls are 
said to live on corn ? 

It is not unusual to hear of a bird adopting a family of an 
entirely different species, as cats sometimes adopt rabbits or 
puppies, and as dogs have been known to become responsibU^ 
for broods of chickens. There is a record of a male cardinal 
grosbeak becoming foster-father to two young Ixaltimore orioles ; 

253 



254 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 

of a scarlet tanager feeding young chipping sparrows ; of a chest- 
nut-sided warbler caring for some young redstarts that were not 
orphans, and a wren-tit feeding a young lazuli bunting. We 
may any day expect to happen upon an incident of this kind, or 
to find where some bird has laid in another's nest, as the quails 
often do and as the roseate and Wilson's terns have been re- 
ported to do. 

Who would expect a woodpecker to turn cannibal and eat 
little birds ? Or to rob birds' nests of their eggs and young ? 
We have no more staid and respected birds than these wood- 
peckers, who are not commonly regarded as ^^ eaters of little 
children" even by jealous bird mammas; but now and 
then some lunatic or hopelessly degenerate woodpecker will 
commit a ghastly crime. The crow-blackbirds are not gener- 
ally supposed to be above temptations of green corn, but they 
were not till recently accused of playing the thug to little 
birds and of poaching live fish from private ponds. But both 
these serious charges have been fully proved against them in 
several instances and the different observers agree that in such 
cases the blackbirds pick out and eat the brains of their prey. 
The honest eaves-swallow has been seen to steal her neighbor's 
mud and to build it into her own nest ; and I have seen the 
blue-backed swallow which is supposed invariably to eat 
nothing but little flies, taken by coursing after them, flying 
round by the dozen and alighting on a cherry tree to pick 
off the caterpillars that had nearly stripped it of its leaves. It 
was a strange thing, too, for a Baltimore oriole to eat green 
poplar leaves, as it was observed to do year after year. 

There is always a chance of seeing something new and in- 
credible, though the chance comes to him who knows best what 
is usual and even more than credible — tiresomely familiar. 
And over and above the pleasure that comes from watching 




Fig. 54.— hermit THRUSH. 



Facing page 255. 



''THE STRANGE THINGS BIBBS BOS' 255 

the ways of birds, is the enjoyment to be taken in their songs 
and calls, which often tell us as much as our eyes could dis- 
cover. 

If your musical ear is not good, and you cannot whistle a 
bird^s song or write it in musical notes, you may put it into 
words that will say as nearly as possible what the bird seems 
to be singing. 

"For what are the voices of birds, 

Ay, and of beasts, but words — our words, 

Only so mucli more sweet ? " 

This exercise will fix your mind upon the bird's song and 
will help you to carry this in your memory from year to 
year, though it has no other value unless it is very well 
done. There is, however, always the chance of doing it well, 
so well that it becomes a classic, and everybody after you will 
quote your version because now they can hear nothing else 
than what you heard. Do we not always remember Thoreau's 
version of the brown thrasher's talk to the farmer : ^' Cover it 
up ! cover it up 1 cover it up ! Pick it up ! pick it up ! pick it 
up ! Pull it up ! pull it up ! pull it up ! " — a song that shows 
properly enough that their relationship is with those nervous 
little scolds, the wrens, rather than with the divinely placid 
spotted thrushes. How Mr. John Burroughs's ^^0 spheral, 
spheral ! holy, holy ! '' the ringing vesper hymn of the hermit 
thrush, doth '' serenely exalt the spirit ! " It brings up 
before us the birch wood veiled with a misty gauze of half- 
unfolded leaves and sweet with the earthy fragrance of early 
May, where, in religious solitude, these saintly singers, like 
nuns in chapel, chant an evening service. '' spheral, spheral I 
holy, holy ! " 

We are indebted to Mr. Burroughs for many of these clear 
transcriptions of songs we have known always. " Teacher I 



256 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 

teacher I ! Teacher ! ! ! " calls the oven-bird to Mr. Burroughs, 
and it is clear how he got it ; he must have been thinking of 
the school days of his youth, when the boy who knew the ques- 
tion, but wasn't asked, took advantage of the mortified silence 
of the boy who had been asked, but didn't know, to call atten- 
tion to himself by sliding far forward on the seat, snapping 
the fingers of his uplifted hand, and calling, " Teacher ! 
teacher I ! Teacher ! ! ! " When you hear the oven-bird high in 
a tree-top calling that sharp crescendo, you will think of the 
boy in the old-time country school and wonder how any one 
could have been so unobservant as to tell of his we-cher or 
beecher notes. 

I find in my notebooks a rendering of the goldfinch's spring 
song, which I am very sure must have come from Mr. Burroughs. 
The goldfinch, our little ^^ yellow bird," with the black cap 
and the black wings and tail, called by the scientists 
'' tristis, the sad one," hits the heart of melancholy with his 
plaintive late summer and fall song. But in the springtime 
he is a joyous lover, and his mating song is a pretty compli- 
ment to his beloved : " Sw^eet, sweet, sweet, Marjor^'e, Mar j one." 

To me the yellow-throated vireo seems to say, " Here I am ! 
Mary ! Mary ! Here I am ! " ISTo doubt Mary is very fond of 
him ; they always seem entirely devoted to each other, and 
they build one of the prettiest nests a proud mother ever 
introduced us to, trusting us to admire and not to injure it. 

The scarlet tanager is generally set down as saying chvp-churr, 
a remark equally without originality and meaning, but to me 
he always seems convulsed with laughter at his little green 
wife's doings, and like to burst his waistcoat buttons as he 
chuckles, " Oh, dear, kick her ! kick her ! " 

^^Who, who, who are you?" Thoreau says is the question 
of the great horned owl. Those big eyes and tall ears cer- 




Fig. 55. — VIREO. 



Facing- page 256. 



''THE STT^ANGE THTIVGS BTIiDS 1)0.'' 257 

tainly indicate curiosity. Isn't the remark appropriate ? for 
before you hear him talk you must go into the forest, his own 
castle, and he has a right to inquire, ^^ Who, who, who are 
you ? '' 

There are the low-spirited goatsuckers, with their " tvhip- 
'poor-wilV and " chuck-wilVs-widow,^^ They remind us of people 
who take pleasure in going to funerals ; all their news is dole- 
ful, but they tell it at length and over and over again. In some 
parts of the South the chuck- wilPs-widow is called the " chip- 
the-red-oak-white-oak '' bird, which is certainly a more cheerful 
if not a more sensible remark. All of you can think of other 
birds that go about telling their own names. Chick-a-dee-dee ! 
Phoe be I Pee-e-wee ! Chebec I you cannot help imitating the 
sagacious, businesslike tone of the first ; the rather impatient 
call of the second, as of a mother calling out of a window 
to a truant child ; the discouraged, hot weather drawl of 
the wood pewee ; and the sharp snappy click of the least 
flycatcher as he jerks out '' chebec ! chebec ! " like a tart 
but bright-eyed girl who intends to bang the door together if 
you ask her another question. There is so much individuality 
about all these birds that have given themselves their own 
names. 

There is, too, our white-th7:oated sparrow, who, intheXorth, 
gets all sorts of names from his song. He is called the Pea- 
body bird, the Asa Peabody bird, or the Old Sam Peabody 
bird, and on Prince Edward Island the Kennedy bird, from 
the syllables he speaks so plainly. High up or low down the 
scale he sings his "a" syllable, then drops or rises to the •* see," 
and sings off in a succession of ringing triplets his "^ Peabodi/, 
Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.''' He sings in the evening or early 
morning; but if he is heard later than nine o'clock, rain is com- 
ing in a few hours. Unfortunatelv he is silent until he i^ets 



258 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS, 

as far north as Massachusetts, so that few of us may hear his 
clear, thrilling notes. Some say that he sings, " Hear me, 
holy Theresa,'' as if supplicating a saint ; but on Prince 
Edward Island they declare that he sings, " Good Lord, 
pity me, pity me, pity me ! " which is a true litany put to most 
fitting music. 

Few birds are easier to tell by their music and harder to tell 
without it than the vireos. By all means put their song into 
words. Remember the yellow-throated vireo's song already 
given and Mr. Chapman's rendering of the white-eyed vireo's 
abrupt little, '' Who are you, eh ? " and that one by which 
Wilson Flagg described once and forever the red-eyed vireo's 
incessant homily, "You see it — you know it — do you hear 
me ? — do you believe it ? " as he trips about the tree trunks, 
picking up insects between the phrases. 

And here is one of the bobolink's worth remembering. If 
run through rather quickly and with increasing rapidity and a 
rising inflection, it mimics admirably the spring song of this 
jolly, careless, light-hearted, and boisterously happy fellow, 
who doesn't try to sing, but just opens his mouth and lets the 
music bubble out. " Tom Noodle, Tom Noodle, you owe me, 
you owe me ten shillings and sixpence ! " — "I paid you, I paid 
you ! " — " You didn't, you didn't ! " — -^ You lie, you lie ; you 
cheat ! " And then the black-and-white dandy who has been 
singing both parts of the duo, just tumbles down into the 

grass to rest himself. 

ft 

" June's bridesman, poet of the year, 
Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here ; 
Half hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, 
Or climbs against the breeze with quivering wings, 
Or, giving way to 't in a mock despair, 
Runs down, a brook of laughter, through the air." 




Fig. 56. — white-throated SPARROW. 



Facing page 258. 



''THE STRANGE TTTTNGS BIRDS DO,'' 259 

These are among the pleasures of the study of birds — the 
unexpectedness of so much that we see, and the novelty that 
we can create for ourselves by trying to find interpretations of 
their songs and habits. Yes, and the uncertainties. It is 
these that make birding a true sport, not inferior to angling to 
those who find their hearts set upon it. It is the gentlest 
of the sporting pleasures, and yet it has the attractions of the 
keenest. Here is an object for a well-earned outing, a chance 
of failure, the thrill of the quest, the premium on knowing 
how, the acquisition of skill and patience, the recollection of 
delight that will help in dull and dreary hours. And there 
are advantages over the other sports of the chase, which not 
only end in bloodshed that is not pleasant to remember, but 
which are forbidden at times and seasons. Por there is no 
law against birding with an opera glass, and it yields more 
varied delight than either rod or gun. How few are the kinds 
of game or fish which the sportsman counts as fit for his pur- 
suit ! how many are the kinds that are accounted game for the 
opera glass ! There is no anticipating the results of a day's 
sport with an opera glass. Science may not be attractive to 
us ; we may not desire knowledge ; but who is able to deny 
the attractions of days with the birds when we reckon them 
with our sports ? 



APPENDIX. 




262 



ZOOGEOGEAPHICAL DIVISIONS OF THE WOKLD 



After Dr. J. A. Allkx. 



REALMS, REGIONS, SUBREGIONS, PROVIXCESj SUBPROVINCES, 
DISTRICTS, FAUN^. 



1. Arctic 



2. North 
Tem- 
perate 



North 
Ameri- 
can 



Cold 
Tem- 
perate 

Warm 
Tem- 
perate 



Humid 



I Appalachian 



I Barren Ground 
[^ Arctic Alaskan 

Aleutian 
Sitkan 
Hudsonian 
Canadian 

[ x\lleghanian 



Carolinian 



I Austroriparian Louisianian 
Great 



' Campestrian , 



Arid 



Plains 

Great 
Basin 
Pacific 
Coast 



(not yet 
divided 
into 
fauuie) 



Sonoran (not yet divided into 
faunc\^) 

Eurasian (Europe and Asia, except India) 

3. Amer- ( Central American 

ican \ ( Floridian 

Tropical [ Antillean Temaulipan 

[ St. Lucas 

4. Indo-African (including India and adjacent islands and Africa except 

northern part). 

5. South- American Temperate (inchuiing ail outside Kcalm 3). 
(). Australian (Australia and surrounding islands). 

7. Lenuirian (INIadagascar). 

'2Cu] 



264 APPENDIX, 

8. Antarctic (Antarctic circumpolar region). 

All the realms may be subdivided like Realm 2, which alone is shown 
in this table. 

MIGEATION. 

I. Mr. William Brewster's list of birds which migrate freely, 
chiefly, or exclusively by day : — 

The Robin. The Waxwing family. 

The Bluebird. The Swallow family. 

The Horaed Lark. The Shrike family. 

The Titlark. The Hummingbird family. 

The Kingbird. The Crow family. 

The Chimney Swift. The Hawk family. 

The Oriole family (except the The Dove family. 
Meadow Lark and the Orioles proper). 

Also from the other list. Pine Grosbeak, Purple Finch, etc., 
etc. 

The manner of the migration of the Kingfisher is not knoA^ai. 

The ISTighthawk, Whippoorwill, Owls, and birds that are 
habitually nocturnal or crepuscular naturally migrate by night. 

II. Mr. Brewster's list of birds that migrate exclusively by 
night : — 

The Thrush family (except Robin The Finch family (except Pine 

and Bluebird). Grosbeak,PurpleFinch(?),Cross- 

The Kinglet family. bills, Redpolls, Goldfinch, Pine 

The Titmouse and Chicadee family. Linnet, and Snow Bunting). 

The Nuthatch family. The Meadow Lark. 

The Creeper family. The Orioles. 

The Wren family. The Flycatcher family (except 

The Warbler family. Kingbird). 

The Vireo family. The Cuckoo family. 

The Tanager family. The Woodpecker family. 

Several of these take short flights by day, but never make 
any extended migration until night, merely seeking their food 
in the direction they intend to fly by night so as to lose no 
ground. 



MTGBATJON, ^ 265 

III. Mr. Brewster's Theory of Migration. 

" 1. Species which, migrate exclusively hy night habitually 
feed in or near the shelter of trees, bushes, rank herbage or 
grass, and when not migrating are birds of limited powers of 
flight and sedentary habits, restricting their daily excursions 
to the immediate vicinity of their chosen haunts. As a rule 
they are of timid, or at least retiring disposition, and when 
alarmed or pursued seek safety in concealment rather than by 
extended flights. 

"2. Species which migrate chiefly, or very freely by day, 
habitually feed in open, exposed situations, and in their daily 
excursions for food often cover considerable distances. As a 
rule they are of a bold, restless disposition, and when alarmed or 
pursued seek safety in long flights rather than by concealment. 

"3. Species which migrate exclusively by day, habitually 
feed either on the wing or over very extensive areas. In dis- 
position they are either trustful and unsuspecting, or wary 
and self-reliant. Without exception they are birds of strong, 
easy flight, and rely solely on their wings for escape from 
danger. 

" These premises lead easily, if not irresistibly, to the con- 
clusion that : — 

" Timid, sedentary, or feeble-winged birds migrate by night 
because they are either afraid to venture on long, exposed 
journeys by daylight, or unable to continue their journeys day 
after day without losing much time in stopping to search after 
food. By taking the nights for travelling they can devote 
the days entirely to feeding and resting in their favorite haunts. 
Good examples are the Thrushes (except the Eobin), Wrens, 
Warblers, and Vireos. 

" Bold, restless, strong-winged birds migrate chiefly, or very 
freely, by day, because, being accustomed to seek their food 
in open situations, they are indifferent to concealment, and 
being further able to accomplish h^ng distances rapidly and 
with slight fatigue, they can ordinarily spare suflicient time 



266 APPENDIX, 

by the way for brief stops in places where food is abundant 
and easily obtained. Under certain conditions, however, as 
when crossing large bodies of water or regions scantily sup- 
plied with food, they are sometimes obliged to travel partly, 
or perhaps even exclusively, by night. Excellent examples 
are the Eobin, Horned Lark, and most of the Oriole family. 

" Birds of easy, tireless wing, which habitually feed in the 
air or over very extensive areas, migrate exclusively by day, 
because, being able to obtain their usual supply of food as they 
fly, or to accomplish the longest journeys so rapidly that they 
do not require to feed on the way, they are under no necessity 
of changing their usual habits. The best examples are the 
Swallows, Swifts, and Hawks. 

" i^octurnal and crepuscular birds, at least migratory species, 
are- all strong-winged and accustomed to seek their food over 
wide areas. Hence, like the Swallows, Swifts, and Hawks, 
they migrate during the hours of their habitual activit}^. 

^^ The conclusions just reviewed will apply also to the wading 
and swimming birds ; for their migrations, making due allow- 
ance for the peculiar habits of certain species and groups, are 
easily explainable by considerations either identical with, or 
similar to, those above mentioned. 

'^ The Bittern, Woodcock, Wilson's Snipe, Spotted Sand- 
piper, and the Bails without exception, migrate exclusively by 
night. They are all sedentary birds addicted to feeding in 
particular and usually limited areas, and all but the Spotted 
Sandpiper s'eek safety in concealment. Accordingly, it is in 
line with the previous reasoning that they should migrate by 
night and rest and feed by day. The case is not, however, 
exactly parallel with that of any of the land birds, for these 
waders (except, perhaps, the Spotted Sandpiper) feed habitu- 
ally more by night than by day. But all — even the Wood- 
cock — also feed freely by day during the migrations. 

" The remainder of the wading and all the swimming birds 
migrate indifferently by both night and day. This was to be 



HINTS ON OBSERVING JUIilJS. 267 

expected when we consider tliat they feed more oj- less indiffer- 
ently and freely at all hours, and are not accustomed to seek 
safety in concealment. 

" Certain species of Ducks, as well as all the Loons, Grebes, 
and Auks do, however, frequently or habitually elude their 
various enemies by diving. Thus water is in one respect to 
them what grass, rushes, etc., are to Snipe and Quail, — a 
refuge from danger. This doubtless explains a fact which I 
have often observed ; viz., that while most diving birds migrate 
freely by day alo7ig our coast they invariably perform long 
overland journeys by night. The reason is obvious. In one 
case flying directly over a continuous exj^anse of water they 
are able to avail themselves of its shelter at a moment's notice ; 
in the other they would be quite without this resource, if 
suddenly threatened or attacked. 

" The manner of migration of our birds is determined by one, 
two, or all of the following considerations : habitual manner of 
procuring food, disposition, wing-power. It evidently has little 
or nothing to do with relationship or affinities except within 
very narrow limits." 

HIIsrTS ON OBSEEVING BIRDS. 

Briefly stated, these hints fall under a few heads, — tools, 
time, what to look for, how to see it, where to go, what to 
notice. The last is treated under hints on identification. 

Of tools. — Besides books, a teacher needs a note-book and, if 
possible, a good glass. A beginner's note-book should be kept 
after his own whim, and with little elaboration beyond a fixed 
set of abbreviations. This is nobody's but his own, and it 
makes no difference if the birds all fly away before they have 
been described. An elaborate note-book is possible only when 
one is well acquainted with the commoner birds. 

Children should not \x' urged to keep note-books; thev see 
more and see it better when there is no eff'oH at rom])osition. 



268 APPENDIX, 

If 3^ou own an opera glass, use it. Any glass is a help, 
but in buying one alicays buy a better one! In buying be 
generous with yourself, recollecting that cheap glasses are not 
good and good glasses are not cheap. And yet the price is no 
surety of excellence. A friend, who had bought six, told me 
that the best of them was much the cheapest. A field glass 
is better than an opera glass. Select a good maker, whose 
name is a guarantee. A glass must be achromatic, stiff-framed, 
of large field and fair power. Sacrifice power to field rather 
than field to power. A high power necessitates a longer frame, 
which tires the neck and the arm, and a small field, which 
makes it difficult to locate the bird. An aluminum frame is 
best on account of its light weight. The new Bausch and 
Lomb Trieder glasses, being made .on a different principle, 
give a high power, a large field, light weight, and a compact, 
short frame, but the price puts them beyond the reach of the 
ordinary amateur. With these, one of the night glasses may 
be found to be less trying to the eyes for sustained observation 
than the regular day glass. 

Time. — The morning is worth many times any other part of 
the day, because it is generally cool, bright, free from wind; it 
is also the period of the bird's greatest activity. Enthusiasts 
rout you out with the sun, but unless it is proposed to visit 
crow, robin, or swallow roosts it seems to me that the uncer- 
tain light, malarial fogs, heavy dews, and morning chill must 
damp the enthusiasm of even the ^^four-o' dockers.'' Six o'clock 
is early enough, and from seven to nine is the best time for the 
most people. Afternoon work is seldom satisfactory, as the 
wind rises, the light is weak and bad, and the birds are tired 
and silent. 

Look for birds you know. Don't hunt rarities. They will 
come to you if they are in the neighborhood, but if you hunt 
them you will be losing good notes on the familiar but not less 
interesting species. 

Go to gardens, groves, shrubbery, and thickets near town, 



HINTS ON IDENTIFYING STRANGE LIVE BIRDS. 269 

especially wooded ravines near water. There are no birds to 
speak of in the wilderness and few in deej.) woods. One's 
best resort will usually be near houses, though the beginner 
never believes this. Go to the same places repeatedly rather 
than to many at intervals; you will see as much and will learn 
more, after having learned to recognize thirty or forty birds, 
than by wandering. 

How to see birds is an art not to be communicated. The first 
step to it is patience ; learn to wait for them. But never lie or 
sit upon the ground or on rocks until full summer time unless 
you have a coat or wrap or are proof against rheumatism. 
This is more important to observe than the birds. Learn 
to take the same advantage of the sun that you would in 
photographing. 



HINTS OX iDE:NTiFYi]srG stea:^ge live bieds. 

Notice as many as you can of the following points : — 

Size (m inches from the tip of the bill to the tip of the tail, remembering 

that the live bird is always longer than he appears to be). 
Color (if you can be sure of it, but at all events the color areas) : 
wing bars, number and color, if present ; 
stripes on head and how placed ; 
white outer tail feathers, if present ; 
rump, if differently colored from back and tail ; 
under tail-coverts, if different from belly ; 
flanks and sides, if brightly colored ; 

odd ornaments or patches of color, as collars, necklaces, breast- 
spots, etc. 
Shape : of body, slender, bulky ; 

of tail, long, short, square, forked, rounded ; 
of wings, round, pointed (in flight) ; 

long or short, judged by the distance they measure off on the 
tail (while sitting) ; 
of bills, length, shape, color ; 
of crest, if present, pointed, erectile, etc. 



270 APPENDIX, 

Habits : walking, hopping ; soaring, hovering ; terrestrial, arboreal, climb- 
ing ; perch preferred, — trunk, limb, tree-top, dead twig, etc. ; 
manner of sitting, — erect, crouched, lengthwise of limb (as the 
night hawks) ; manner of flying, — direct, undulating, heavy, 
flapping, etc. ; disposition, — restless, quiet, stupid, shy, tame, 
unsuspicious. 

Food and how procured (if this can be observed with certainty ; often it 
cannot be determined) . 

Song : chirp, trill, twitter, melody, scream, hoot, etc., describe as nearly 
as possible. 

Nest : place, — ground, bush, tree, hole, limb, twig ; 
placed how, — saddled, pensile, in fork, etc. ; 
materials, — grass, moss, feathers, hair, twigs, etc. ; 
eggs, — number and color. 

The more of these points that are determined the surer will 
be the identification, but often one or two of them will suffice 
to identify a bird. The secret is to seize on the really distinc- 
tive mark, whether of habit, voice, or color. A note " walks 
head downward down tree-trunks '' surely means a nuthatch ; 
" tail with yellow band across tip'' means the cherry bird, even 
if there is nothing more said or seen about the bird. 

Always write the notes while the bird is before you. Use 
your own code of abbreviations. Whatever is doubtful write, 
but mark it by a sign of interrogation in parentheses follow- 
ing, thus : " crested (?).'' Whatever is absolutely certain, if 
either strange or apparently important, mark with an exclama- 
tion point not enclosed in marks, thus : " crested (?), a band of 
yellow across the tip of tail ! small vermilion spots apparently 
on rump ! " There is no doubt here that the cedar waxwing 
has been seen, and that the bird must have had a crest. 

CERTAIN QUESTIONS ANSWERED. 

There are a few questions so sure to come uj) that they may 
as well be answered now. 

Do I think a school might oivn a few mounted birds ? I do 
not see why it might not. A few well-chosen, well-mounted 



CETITAJN QTrESTTCms ANSWEBED. Til 

birds, kept away from dust and moths are an invaluable aid. 
It is the fate of the vast majority of birds to die violent deaths, 
and it seems to me that it is no worse for the bird to live in 
Q^gy for the interests of science than to die uncounted by the 
talons of the hawk and owl and by the teeth of fox, skunk, 
and weasel. Full well I know the thirst for knowledge that 
prompts the boy to make a closer acquaintance of what he 
only half sees at a distance ; full well I know, if parents and 
policemen do not, the mysteries of the deadly air-gun and pop- 
gun and sling-shot. '^ Better the eyes should see than that 
desire should wander,'' said the Preacher, who jjerhaps remem- 
bered that he had once been a boy. 

A representative and fairly satisfactory collection would be : 
One of any species of Grebe, Gull, Duck, Grouse, Heron (the 
least Bittern would be the smallest, the Bittern more fairly 
representative). Sandpiper (or Plover, or both), Hawk, Owl, 
Cuckoo or Kingfisher, Woodpecker, Blackbird, Sparrow, Ply- 
catcher, Bluejay, Swift, Swallow, Warbler, Eobin. This would 
give types of eighteen of the best-known families. 

Specimens of the commoner species are not expensive, — 
from 75 cents to f 1.50. Small birds, if not of rare species, 
cost less than large ones. All specimens should be mounted 
on stands and fully labelled. All must be kept in air-tight 
glass cases with locked doors, and with camphor or naphthaline 
in the case to drive away moths and dermestes. If this is not 
done, the collection is sure to be ruined shortly. 

While a local taxidermist may be able to supply good speci- 
mens, I take pleasure in naming (without their permission"* 
two firms well known for their fair dealing: H. A. Ward, 
2 College Ave., Eochester, N.Y., and Charles K. Worthen, 
Warsaw, Knox Co., Illinois. By merely stating that the col- 
lection is for school use and the amount of money to be ex- 
pended on it, these firms will furnish a better selection of 
well-prepared specimens than the novice would be able to 
choose for himself. 



272 APPENDIX, 

Do I approve of hoys making collections of birds? By no 
means. It was to prevent just this that I advocated a school 
collection prepared by a competent naturalist. 

Do I approve of dissections in class? ]SI"ot in the lower 
grades certainly. In high school and college work nothing 
.takes the place of actual dissection; but is it best to exploit 
the whole world of wonders for children too young to appre- 
ciate them ? I have purposely left out of this book all physi- 
ology and anatomy that could not be illustrated by chicken 
boneSj in order to avoid any necessity or excuse for dissections, 
for which most children have a distaste and to which many 
parents have objections. In this book the mechanism of the 
bird is taken up instead of its anatomy. Even the study of the 
eye is conducted by means of a comparison with a mechanical 
instrument. 

Is there any substitute for collections? No two-dimension 
representation can take the place of a three-dimension object 
in teaching children. They need the ^^real thing.'^ Still, 
where economy is necessary, there is a substitute which is 
not without merit. The little monthly magazine, Birds and 
Nature, published by the Nature Publishing Co. of Chicago at 
$1.00 a year, gives many colored photographic reproductions 
of mounted birds, accompanied by a simple and usually correct 
text. Back numbers may be obtained at moderate rates. The 
same pictures may be bought separately of the Perry Pictures 
Company. 

What books do I recommend for teachers? Among so many 
excellent texts, I decline to make invidious distinctions. It 
is scarcely possible that there is a mind so abnormally de- 
veloped that there has not been a bird book written to fit its 
needs ! Still, it must be conceded by all, that for the earnest 
student, especially for one who already knows thirty or forty 
species, nothing competes in price and quality with Mr. Frank 
A. Chapman's " Handbook of Birds of North America " (|3.00). 
A young beginner should have a more elementary book. 



LISTS OF BOOKS 273 

Another book, in a class by itself and of high value to the 
field student, is Mr. C. J. Maynard's " Handbook of the 
Sparrows, Finches, etc., of New England" (f l.oO). This gives 
a simple but trustworthy guide to every one of this large and 
difficult family visiting New England. Any bird book not 
to be locally obtained may be purchased at any time of L. S. 
Foster, 30 Pine St., New York, who makes a specialty of bird 
books. 

LISTS OF BOOKS. 

I. Books that will be helpful to a beginner in identifying 
birds : — 

Merriam, Birds through an Opera Glass. '^.75. 

Fifty common land birds of New England and Northern New York ; • 
illustrated. An admirable " first book " for children. 
Grant, Our Common Birds. $1.50. 

Ninety species found near New York City ; with photogravures from 
mounted specimens. 
Howe, Every Bird. $1.00. 

One hundred and twenty-four genera of New England birds, illus- 
trated in outline, and too briefly treated for field work. 
Maynard, Handbook of the Sparrows, Finches, etc., of New^ England. 
11.50. 
Forty-six species, with colored plates. The colors do not print well, 
but the book is a very satisfactory handbook for this difficult group, 
and is especially adapted for field work. 
Wright and Coues, Citizen Bird. $1.50. 

A story of bird-life, exquisitely illustrated, and especially good for 
children. 
Merriam, Birds of Village and Field. $2.00. 

One hundred and fifty species of our better-known birds, finely 
illustrated. 
Chapman, Bird-life : a guide to the study of our common birds. SI. 75. 
Seventy-five full-page drawings and ample text ; a vade mecum for 
beginners. 
Chapman, A Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America. So. 00. 

This book includes every species and subspecies known east of the 
Mississippi River, and is the best brief, scientific ornithology ever 

T 



274 APPENDIX. 

written ; not adapted, however, to students too young to use a 
standard botany, though it is as little technical as possible. 
Wright, Bird-craft. 83.00. 

Two hundred birds pictured and ably described. 
MiNOT, Land and Game Birds of New England. 83.50. 

Accurate and untechnical, an excellent book to get one into the spirit 
of the study, but scantily illustrated. 
McIlwraith, Birds of Ontario. $2.00. 

Good not only for the birds of Canada, but for the more northern 
states as well ; illustrated. 
Blaxchax, Bird Neighbors. 82.00. 

Fifty colored plates. 
Blanchan, Birds that Hunt and are Hunted. $2.00. 

Forty-eight colored plates. These two books cover most of the better- 
known land and water birds, and give good colored pictures to 
guide in identification. 
Eliot, North American Shore Birds. $2.50. 

Includes all the snipe, sandpipers, plovers, etc. , with fine drawings of 
each species, and accurate technical descriptions ; also short account 
of habits. 
Eliot, Gallinaceous Game Birds of North America. $2.50. 

Treats the turkeys, grouse, quail, etc., afterthesamemethodastheabove. 
Corey, How to Know the Ducks, Geese, and Swans of North America. 
Paper covers, $1.00. 

A fully illustrated and thoroughly prepared manual. 
Corey, How to Know the Shore Birds of North America. Paper, $.75. 

Similar to the above in scope and plan ; fully illustrated. 
Langille, Our Birds in their Haunts. $3.00. 

A high authority on songs, habits, etc. , and long a favorite work with 
beginners. 
Fisher, Hawks and Owls of the United States. (United States Bulletin. ) 
Has very fine colored plates of each species, with full account of the 
economic value of each. 
NuTTALL, Handbook of Ornithology. Revised by Chamberlain. 2 vols., 
$9.00. 

A modernized reprint of an old and valuable work. 
Belding, Land Birds of the Pacific Coast. $2.50. 
Goss, Birds of Kansas. $7.50. * 

Five hundred and twenty-nine species treated ; thirty-five plates ; a 
recognized authority, not only on the birds of Kansas, but of all 
the Mississippi Valley. 



LIHTS OF BOOKS, 275 

CouES, Birds of the Colorado Valley. $4.00. 
CouES, Birds of the Northwest. $4.00. 

Two old books, but still high authorities on the regions covered. 
Corey, Key to the Water Birds of Florida. .$1.75. 
Sa3iuels, Birds of New England and Adjacent States. 
Stearns and Coues, New England Bird Life. 2 vols. 

Two books of good value, but displaced by later and better illus- 
trated w^orks. 

The following standard works are either very large^ rare, 
costly, or highly technical works such as the ordinary pur- 
chaser would not care to buy. They are invaluable in their 
place, and can be consulted in any large library. It should be 
remembered that the older works, like Audubon and Wilson, 
use a different nomenclature, so that sometimes a bird will not 
bear the same name as to-day ; also that many new species • 
have been discovered since these books were published. 

Audubon's Birds ; colored plates of all species. 

Wilson's Ornithology. 

Baird, Brewer, and Ridgwat, Land Birds (3 vols.) and Water Birds 

(2 vols.), 
Bendire's Life Histories of North American Birds. 2 vols. 

This work was left unfinished by the death of the author, but the 
part completed is an acknowledged authority on the habits and 
nests of the Hawks, Grouse, Woodpeckers, Flycatchers, etc. 
Colored plates of eggs only. 
Ridgway's Manual of North American Birds.. 
CouEs's Key to North American Birds. 

These two are the standard technical works on North American birds, 
but are not intended for field work, and contain nothing about the 
habits of birds. 
Maynard, Birds of Eastern North America. 

A large and valuable work, fully illustrated, and with ample notes 
on the habits of birds. 

II. Books thiit treat of birds descriptively and infor- 
mally; good books to draw from the ])nblic library for ln>nie 
reading*. 



276 



APPENDIX. 



Frank Bolles, 

Wilson Flagg, 

C. C. Abbott, 
John Burroughs, 

Henry D. Thoreau, 



H. E. Parkhurst, 

Maurice Thompson, 
Bradford Torrey, 



Florence A. Merriam, 
Leander S. Keyser, 
Olive Thorne Miller, 



Land of the Lingering Snow. 

North of Bearcanip Water. 

From Blomidon to Smoky. 

Birds and Seasons of New England. 

Field and Forest. 

Woods and Byways of New England. 

Birds about us. 

Travels in a Tree-top ; and other volumes. 

Birds and Poets. 

Locusts and Wild Honey. 

Wake-robin ; and his other nature books. 

Walden. 

The Maine Woods. 

Early Spring in Massachusetts. 

Summer. 

Autumn. 

Winter. 

The Bird's Kalendar. 

Song Birds and Water Fowl. 

Byways and Bird Notes ; and other books. 

Birds in the Bush. 

A Rambler's Lease. 

The Footpath Way. 

A Florida Sketch Book. 

Spring Notes from Tennessee. 

In the White Mountains. 

A-birding on a Bronco. 

My Summer in a Mormon Village. 

In Bird-land. 

Bird-dom. 

Little Brothers of the Air. 

In Nesting Time. 

Bird Ways. 

A Bird Lover in the West. 



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Pratt's America's Story, Beginner's Book 

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Eckstorm's The Bird Book 
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*' For a general, all-round, well balanced system, capable of use in all schools, 
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Whiting's Sixth Music Reader, Girls' Edition. Designed for use in the last years 
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Supplementary Music for Public Schools. Eight page numbers, 3 cents. Twelve 

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Thomas's Modulator. A chant, 34 x 45 inches, mounted on rollers. Gives the nine 
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Whittlesey and Jamieson's Harmony in Praise. A collection of Hymns with 

responsive Biblical selections, for college and school chapel exercises and for families. 
Cloth. Octavo. 75 cents. 

Wilson's Infant School Drill. Exercises, with music, for the healthy development 

of the body. 32 pages. Square 8vo. Illustrated. Limp cloth. 25 cents. 

Descriptive circulars and full information free on request. Correspondence is invited. 

D. C. HEATH & CO., Publishers, Boston,New York,Chicago 



JAN 26 1901 



im iio jyui 



